Is your sales team suffering from the complacency coronavirus? Discover four key indicators from sales coach Venkataraman Subramanyan that signal complacency within your sales organization and learn how to address them effectively.
It’s a pleasure to be back after a short break. Over the last few months, a lot has changed. Decision-making has slowed, customers are taking more time and are open to less risk. This impacts salespeople and sales organizations, making it tougher to meet quotas and commitments.
However, there’s another issue many sales leaders have shared with me: complacency. Despite the challenges organizations face, they feel their sales teams aren’t feeling the hunger or pain enough. They’re actually complacent.
In this video, I want to share four ways to identify complacency within your sales organization.
Churning the Same Batter: Observe whether your sales reviews are discussing the same deals repeatedly. If the deals you discuss are the same as last week, last month, last quarter, or even last semester, it means you’re churning the same batter. Beware, you might be hearing about specific activities without seeing actual progress or outcomes.
Source of Opportunities: Check the source of your opportunities. Are they specific requests from existing customers or proactive outbound prospecting? Often, I observe that pipelines are filled with customer interests and requests, not proactive, insight-driven opportunity generation.
Quality of Proposals: Look at the quality of proposals your team is submitting. Are they transactional or transformational? This means smaller deals versus larger, multi-horizon deals.
Altitude of Conversations: Assess the altitude of conversations with customers. Are they with CXO-level executives or two levels below? I’ve always emphasized the importance of a CXO meeting every day for everyone in the sales organization.
Reflect on these four indicators, often called yellow lights, signaling complacency in the sales organization.
-Churning the same batter, same opportunities, no progress.
-More inbound opportunities rather than outbound.
-Transactional proposals instead of transformational.
-Conversations at a lower level rather than with proactive decision-makers.
If you notice these signs, act quickly to fix them. Failing to do so can lead to stasis in the sales organization, which is harmful in the short, medium, and long term.
Good luck as you tackle complacency in your sales organization. I look forward to engaging with you more every week. Good luck.
