Main reasons for the under-performance of a sales team

There may be many reasons for the under-performance of a company’s sales team. Sales performance, is influenced by many factors, which are usually intertwined, resembling a chain, with one weak link affecting the whole operation. While the particular factors that affect sales performance vary, based on specific markets, products and services, some of the fundamental influencing factors relate to the product or service itself, the management, the quality of customer service and the marketing strategy.

Regarding the product or service itself, even though the quality of the sold product or service may not be the reason for the under-performance, other aspects of the product or service may be. Such an aspect may be the pricing of the product or service, especially when it is combined with competitive ignorance. The approach to overcome this challenge requires competitive intelligence by bench-marking against the competition, acquiring helpful insight into the competitor’s strategies and ensuring the market competitiveness of the company’s product or service.

Another reason for the decline in sales may relate to the performance of the individual sales representatives and the quality of customer service. Poor communication with the customers and other team members, the lack of the ability to engage with potential clients and build relationships, poor salesmanship and lack of experience and motivation may be some of the reasons that hinder the sales team’s effectiveness and may lead to poor sales performance. The approach to overcome this challenge requires initially proper hiring and vetting of new employees and subsequently allocation of adequate training and support, as well as monitoring of performance indicators.

Another reason for the decline in sales may relate to the capabilities of the management team and in general the higher ups in the chain of command within the company. Bad management can lead to bad sales performance though several ways. One reason might be the poor hiring of individual sales people, which in turn will lead to poor results from the get-go and a considerable waste of money and resources. Another reason may relate to poor leadership skills, with managers focused on their own tasks and not caring actively about how their sales team is progressing through the day and on a day to day basis. They simply focus on mere numbers and results at the end of each quarter and judge their sales team performance based on those result, putting to much pressure on them and threatening them with sanctions or dismissal.

This is also accompanied by a total disregarding for providing adequate training and support in order to genuinely help the representatives grow and flourish within a tolerating environment. Finally, poor management can be a result of insecurity and emotional instability of the managers, are afraid of the progress of the members of their sales team and the possibility of some of them producing better results than they do. Therefore, instead of assisting them in their role and actively supporting them, they undermine them through-out the way and try to take ownership of their accomplishments in orders to further progress their own career. However, selfishness and envy are not conductive in a sales team, which requires teamwork and collaboration to be productive.

Finally, sales performance is affected by the marketing strategy of the company and declining sales may be due to a misalignment between sales and marketing. Unproductive or wasted leads, poorly targeted content, more complex workflow and longer sales cycles may be only few of the hindrances of the misalignment and miscommunication between sales and marketing. The approach to overcome this challenge requires a closer collaboration and communication between the sales and marketing teams, the alignment of goals as well as the implementation of strategies and tools to facilitate such an alignment.