Are Your Employees Sabotaging Sales?

Posted by in Sales


The sales department typically handles prospecting, sales presentations, customer calls and closing the sale. A job in sales is an attractive career for energetic, extroverted self-starters with an entrepreneurial spirit. Since success and earning power depend on  sales numbers and not solely on a fixed salary, sales professionals have the added incentive to perform. More sales mean higher commissions and overall earnings. 

 

Smart companies realize it’s not just the sales team that makes a sale. All employees are company ambassadors, making an impression on customers that either helps or hurts the sales team’s efforts. In a Forbes article, "Can Your Employees Be Your New Sales Force," Todd Wilms outlines some strategies to use all your employees to serve customers and promote your company’s brand. “Sales is everyone’s responsibility,” says Wilms, a mantra everyone has heard. And it’s true that no matter what the job, every employee contributes either directly or indirectly to product or service quality. That quality translates into customer satisfaction and can affect repeat sales. Harnessing the efforts of all employees to positively promote your brand can dramatically increase your company’s sales power.

 

This strategy can work both ways. If your employees make a positive impression, that’s good for the brand. However, they can also sabotage sales by poor performance, poor quality and forgetting that sales is a team effort. Whether you’re selling widgets of delivering a service, all employees need to work together at top performance to make the whole-company sales team support the sales professionals and give a positive impression of the brand.

 

  1. Communication. Poor communications can lose a sale and a customer. A hotel event planner may write a pricy contract for a business meeting using lots of meeting space, meals, hotel rooms, breakout sessions and special events. Without communications with the rest of the operations staff, the event planner may have sold something the rest of the employees can’t deliver. Everyone has to communicate throughout the sales process to be sure the team can deliver once the contract is signed and the execution is handed off to someone else.
     
  2. Availability. Can production handle the 10,000 piece order you just sealed with a new customer? Can they handle the modifications and deliver on schedule? Salespeople are focused on sales and “making the numbers” that they can overpromise. Also, schedules change, equipment goes down or is taken offline for maintenance. Sales has to work with production to make sure they can deliver a quality product to specifications on-time.
     
  3. Information. It happens. The company rolls out the latest and greatest version of its most sought-after widget, but neglects to train the customer service team prior to the launch. The same for changing internal processes or switching procedures. The customer with a small problem gets handed off several times or has to deal with an otherwise competent service representative who, through no fault of his own, doesn’t have a clue. Frustrated customers value time and need answers. Poor customer service will send customers looking for other options.
     
  4. Leadership. Numbers 1, 2 and 3 above happen with regularity. This frustrates everyone, affects morale, concentration, performance and respect for leadership. Leaders must be part of the team--directing, coaching, supporting and encouraging all employees. They need to be involved without micro-managing, giving employees sufficient resources and the authority to make decisions.
     

Employees can expand your sales force without adding headcount to the sales department. Making every employee a “brand ambassador” builds employee loyalty while improving the bottom line.

 

Image by Ambro / freedigitalphotos.net

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  • Ricardo G
    Ricardo G
    Sales are not lost because of sales team, quite often poor leadership leads to bad performance by sales teams
  • Eileen P
    Eileen P
    In my 25 years of sales experience, I can attest to the fact that this article is ABSOULTELY correct!  In my last position, I sold medical equipment.  The "sales" was to doctors, but the other "sale" has to be to patients!  If the customer service people were not trained, the patient became frustrated and angry and marched right back to the doctor to complain.  I spent 3 years trying to point that out to the "big wigs" to no avail.  I resigned last month!  Organizations MUST, in my opinion, realize that we are all sales people to some extent!  
  • Rebecca M
    Rebecca M
    Currently employed by Dillards, Chesterfield as a Sales Specialist.  This is an excellent article.  Can you send it to our store?  Thanks.  
  • tammy campbell
    tammy campbell
    Yes, a good team is one that works together to provide a excellent service from the moment they call our company till they place abs receive their orders.  The most important, well at least equal to is the top guy is answering your phones. This person is typically under educated, under paid and over looked at being praised if they pull off keeping someone happy by coddling them, figuring out who to summon for help and executing the transfer of either a dissatisfied client or a potential client both which are huge.  I am always aware of my first impression of a company when I first make contact and it can sometimes take a long time to shake an unpleasant first impression but it is easy to overlook a mistake when ur experience with your first contact was pleasant and upliftng.  I say hire more educated, articulate ability to multi task individuals  (dispatchers are good) to man your phones and your front desk and compensate them with incentives to make them pick up that phone and smile into it as they are stating your company name proudly.....  it goes a long way!

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