The sales industry as a whole has always been a transitional career move/path environment. Today it’s more than ever. Managers, Owners, Presidents, and CEO’s are short fused with their sales teams. Sales members are looking at the proverbial “grass is greener” across all industries in response. A great time to hire and get that sales team dreamed of. Or so I thought.
No matter how great an organization is there are always customer issues. It could be a misunderstanding, personality conflict, a service level issue, or simply customer remorse. Many times all of these at once. As the original relationship builder, the sales professional needs to be able to work with customer issues or as I like to fondly call them, customer heat.
I would constantly hear the term “a teaching opportunity” any time someone made a mistake. At first this kind of bugged me to be honest. It seemed like a kinder, gentler way of saying they screwed up without saying it. As an upfront guy this tactful approach seemed… well… weak. But then as I thought about it more it actually made a lot of sense. These issues/problems should be times for teaching opportunities, not scolding’s, if you’re truly trying to build the best sales team possible.
For the life of me I can not figure out how threatening a persons income has become a “stick” for sales training. “You could always not get paid”, “Your commission will be cut if you don’t…, You screwed up… which cost me.. and now is going to cost you!”. And yet I have witnessed this time and time again by so called “managers”. Why would someone do that? Why would someone let them do that?