The generic challenges of being a sales leader -how conventional thinking gets in the way

Over the last few years, several recurring themes have emerged from our conversations with the sales leadership community we engage with.

Year-on-year targets have increased, but investment in headcount to deliver on these increased targets has not kept up, flatlined, or reduced.

The ubiquitous and fundamental question is how do we get more from our people?

Whatever the results, the role of being a sales director in the current environment means we are likely to be challenged by the board of directors across responsibilities in several areas, all to do with 'getting more from our people:

The sales leadership challenge set:

? The Market Growth Challenge: Results are market driven; what are you doing to get ahead of the market curve?

? The 20:80 Challenge: Results are OK. However, 20% of the headcount is delivering 80% of the result; what are you doing to develop the 80%'?

? The New Logo Challenge: Great results from run rate business from our existing customer base, but what are you doing to drive business from new logo acquisition?

? The New Product /Service Challenge: A vast % of the business is from old product and service sets. Why is the uptake of the new product and service launched last quarter so poor?

? The Heroic Save Challenge: Results are OK but are driven by a 'heroic save 'approach at the end of the quarter. What are you doing to stabilise the results consistently month on month?

? The Pipeline Development Challenge: Good result last quarter, but pipeline coverage is not where it needs to be, leaving us exposed next quarter.

? The Lead Conversion Challenge: We have invested a lot of marketing budget and resource in generating leads; why are the conversion rates so low?

? The Key staff Retention Challenge:?Great results, but you have lost 2-3 key members of your team to the opposition; why are they motivated to leave your team?

There is also a hidden challenge in The mentoring and coaching challenge, and I lack the time and confidence to develop, mentor and offer feedback to my team.

If some of this is representative of the scenarios you face as a sales leader, it is all an amalgamation of the challenges that your sales teams face on a day-by-day basis:

The sales force challenge set

? The Distraction Challenge: The team lacks the focus on the key activities that make success happen. Current organisational culture fused with 'always on' technology means many reasons to be distracted, so they default to more comfortable but less productive tasks.

? The Prospecting Challenge: Not enough time is spent on effectively prospecting. It is fraught with potential rejection,?resulting?in it being displaced by other unproductive activities not related to the sales process

? The Conversation Challenge: Our sales teams do not have the breadth and depth of conversation with our prospective clients we would like (or at the appropriate level). They are more comfortable relying on generic presentation tools to tell prospective clients how great we are (global office locations, number of employees, and our current client portfolio) rather than understanding the client's business needs or delivering business insights.

? The Qualification Challenge: Our sales teams do not qualify hard enough. They fall back on spending a disproportionate amount of time compiling beautiful-looking proposals, which are misaligned and lead to unrealistic sales forecasts.

? The Adversity Challenge: Our sales teams do not recover well from the inevitable setbacks and rejections and fall back into comfort zones and displacement activities.

? The Confidence Challenge: Even beneath the skin of our most outwardly confident salespeople, there can reside a lack of self-confidence, especially when challenged to sell at the executive level, take on new product and service sets or practice a new sales methodology.

The paradox of conventional wisdom

As a panacea for these generic challenges, the traditional wisdom is to invest in the conventional sales training on the new sales process or methodology that is in vogue.?The inconvenient truth is that a vast percentage (87% according to research by Huthwaite International) will dissipate and die after three months. Thus, wasting obscene amounts of shareholder budget and internal political goodwill.

A new, proven, and practical approach to enhancing sales performance

The answer is about mindset: developing self-awareness, self-determination, and clarity of thinking in sales teams.

The excellent news is compelling evidence that scientific tools from sports psychology, business psychology, neuroscience, and stoic philosophy can enhance focus, resilience, motivation, self-confidence, and empathy. All personal attributes are needed to ameliorate the challenges in this blog.

The Mindset Development Group Ltd is a company that has comprehensively researched the above and developed The Thriving Sales Professional Framework, delivering tools, techniques, and mental constructs to enhance the mental toughness needed to thrive in the challenges of being a salesperson in the post COVID enviroment.