--- title: "The Fatal 11: Eleven Issues That Drive Sales Managers Crazy" description: "When a consulting firm asked sales executives and managers about their weak points, their answers fell into 11 categories, including lack of a clear sales process, inaccurate forecasting, poor customer selection criteria, and inadequate coaching from sales managers." author: "New Distribution" publisher: "New Distribution" email: "zhaobo258@gmail.com" telephone: "+8615854817671" published: "2017-09-22" language: "en" canonical: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-fatal-11-eleven-issues-that-drive-sales-managers-crazy-5dfd34d8/" markdown: "https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-fatal-11-eleven-issues-that-drive-sales-managers-crazy-5dfd34d8.md" original_source: "https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/be9_gtYeLbAQWIx_Im9cIQ" translation: "https://xinjignxiao.com/zh/articles/%E8%87%B4%E5%91%BD11%E6%9D%A1-%E5%8D%81%E4%B8%80%E4%B8%AA%E4%BB%A4%E9%94%80%E5%94%AE%E7%BB%8F%E7%90%86%E6%8A%93%E7%8B%82%E7%9A%84%E9%97%AE%E9%A2%98-5dfd34d8.md" attribution: "New Distribution — https://xinjignxiao.com/en/articles/the-fatal-11-eleven-issues-that-drive-sales-managers-crazy-5dfd34d8/" usage_policy: "https://xinjignxiao.com/ai-policy.txt" --- # The Fatal 11: Eleven Issues That Drive Sales Managers Crazy > When a consulting firm asked sales executives and managers about their weak points, their answers fell into 11 categories, including lack of a clear sales process, inaccurate forecasting, poor customer selection criteria, and inadequate coaching from sales managers. **Foreword: When a consulting firm spoke with sales executives and sales managers, asking where their weak points were, their overall responses could be categorized into 11 types.** 1. Sales organizations lack a clear sales process and common language. "We often have ongoing discussions about a client. We spend almost an hour 'telling stories,' and I'm not sure we've covered everything or have a clear strategy. I don't know what we don't know." 2. Sales forecasts are inaccurate and overly optimistic. "We know that a positive attitude is good, but it can interfere with objective judgment. Some of our salespeople and managers tend to be overly optimistic about the probability of winning. How do we ensure that the most experienced managers in the organization guide and evaluate our sales operations?" 3. Lack of business selection criteria. "We believe there is a clear difference between proactively eliminating and passively withdrawing when faced with sales opportunities. In sales, everyone knows you can't pursue a deal you don't think will be profitable. But who can judge which deals will be profitable? We lack commonly agreed criteria for deals not worth pursuing." 4. Inability to sell to senior management. "We place great emphasis on marketing, shifting from providing 'products' to providing 'solutions,' which requires our salespeople to sell to higher-level personnel. Solutions have been elevated to a strategic level, but many of our salespeople still sell products and conduct business at too low an organizational level." 5. Salespeople lack effective information, and information is not differentiated. "Our salespeople and marketing department don't communicate. In fact, most of the time, they don't even like each other. Sales reps receive a large amount of product promotional materials but have to sift through them to find applicable information. The wider the product line, the longer it takes new salespeople to get up to speed and become familiar with the products." 6. Passive response to competition, losing opportunities. "In too many competitions, competitors' sales volumes exceed ours, which surprises us. From the start, we are in a reactive mode, as if the competition has already been controlled." 7. Only know how to sell products, not solutions. "Too many of our salespeople are business-oriented and don't see the bigger picture. They only think about closing a deal, not turning it into a larger, holistic solution-based sale. In the early stages of the buying cycle, we don't deliver value with our solutions, so buyers eventually view our offerings as commodities. Moreover, over the years, we've trained customers to wait until the end of the quarter to buy from us." 8. Salespeople work independently, lacking teamwork. "For us, it's too common for multiple sales reps from different branches to compete for the same customer. Our customers only need one person to represent our organization, but local salespeople don't see that. Our branches don't even communicate with each other, leading to contradictory strategies and awkward situations." 9. Lack of customer selection criteria and market segmentation. "We don't know how to determine which customers to invest in, and treating all customers equally doesn't make sense. Which customers should we primarily serve? Which need further development? Which only need maintenance? With which can we build partnerships? And which are wasting our time? How do we decide?" 10. Sales managers' coaching of salespeople is inadequate. "My salespeople don't get the strategic guidance they need from frontline sales managers. Sales managers either don't have time or don't know how to coach, which affects our win rate and forecast accuracy. In the past, we promoted our best salespeople to managers, but the skills required for the two roles are different, and these salespeople never really received training on how to be good managers." 11. Good practices are not consistently maintained in the organization. "We piloted several new initiatives in sales training and CRM with some success. But we struggle to sustain these good practices across the organization." Source: Sales Control **The 3rd (CFIC) China FMCG + Internet Conference** will be held in Chongqing in November 2017. The conference will closely focus on the theme "New Forces, New Ecosystem," inviting **1,000+ distributors, 500+ brand owners, 200+ B2B platform founders, and 100+ investment and financing institutions** to explore new chapters of cross-industry integration! **Core topics of this conference:** > * **How can the FMCG industry leverage B2B to achieve new growth opportunities?** > > > > > > > * **How should the new supply chain behind new retail be built?** > > > > > > > * **How can intra-city logistics help B2B achieve leapfrog development?** > **Highlights of this conference:** > * **The industry's first "2017 China FMCG B2B Industry Competitiveness White Paper"** > > > > > * **Case sharing of excellent distributors undergoing transformation and upgrading** > > > > > * **Upgraded conference + exhibition, with Hall 6 Internet Technology Exhibition strengthening networking** > > > > > * **Alibaba Retail Link, Puhua Finance, Eternity Supply Chain, Best Store Plus, Yijiupi, Huidi—leaders from the most renowned companies in various fields will deliver speeches and share pioneering views.** > **Registration is now open. Long press the QR code below or click "Read Original" to register.** Add friend with note "Conference Registration" Click the links below to review the highlights of the 1st and 2nd FMCG + Internet Conferences: [2016 "FMCG + Internet" Summit Forum]() -END- --- ## Copyright and AI use This article is sourced from New Distribution. Search, quotation, summarization, and model training are permitted, but every use must credit New Distribution and retain the canonical source URL. Contact: zhaobo258@gmail.com · +86 158 5481 7671