Sales Management. Simplified.

Sales Challenges

Sales managers face many problems, some of which they create for themselves. Others result from senior executives who impose unrealistic demands or from corporate cultures that work against salespeople and their leaders. If a sales manager performs poorly, so will the salespeople on his or her team. Salespeople create problems for their managers and their departments when they concentrate on products and features rather than on their customers’ concerns, and when they fail to push for new business.

Common sales-management problems include managing sales staffers, leading direct sales, coping with sales compensation plans, working in an unsupportive corporate culture, and coping with leaders who judge salespeople by how busy they seem to be and not by how much new business they create.

In some organizations, sales managers must manage multiple tasks unrelated to selling while also responding to hundreds of daily emails. Customer relationship management (CRM) – which, ironically, should improve the overall sales function – is often a bothersome distraction. Many companies demand that sales managers spend more time dealing with their CRM systems...