Sales & Marketing Management offers this quick article – Avoiding Accountability Talks. First, the context of the article is the reluctance of employees (and managers) to engage in holding other employee’s accountable. A couple of survey stats:
- 50 percent say they are afraid of negative outcomes.
- 16 percent say they don’t know how to start, hold or finish such a conversation.
Sales managers take note – this activity is one of the most important components to effective sales management. We encounter this reluctance often. Salespeople need to be held accountable to their activities, their behaviors and ultimately, their results. You don’t even have to be good at it. But you do have to do it.
The first step is to stop allowing excuses. Something will always go wrong when selling. The best salespeople handle the problems while moving forward with their selling process. Don’t allow the weaker salespeople to use excuses to explain poor performance.
Once salespeople understand the old excuses are not going to work, you can then start to hold them accountable for their calls, prospects, qualifying, everything. This slight change by the sales manager will have a fundamental effect on the entire sales culture.