QUALITY

Bob

ALAN OAKES publisher ajoakes@aol.com

In almost every industry-and of course this one is no different-the issue of differentiation poses increasing challenges. I have never worked in a company-especially the larger ones-where the sales force was not constantly under scrutiny for not performing, and where everyone else in the organization always felt the sales force was underperforming. Having started my career in sales, it is no surprise to hear or think that everyone else in the organization thinks they can do it better than the sales force. But this research concluded a number of interesting statistics out of the mouths of sales managers themselves. Sixty-seven percent believe their sales teams are not making enough sales calls to continually add new prospects to their sales funnel, and 52Vo believe that their sales reps are not consistently identifying and reaching key decision makers.

Six out of l0 believe their sales teams do not qualify leads as well as they should, and 487o believe their salespeople struggle to progress to push