Nine Dumb Things Sales Managers Do

Let’s face it: there are some dumb sales managers out there. Here are ten things that sales managers do which drive sales reps batty — and on to other jobs:

Dumb Thing #1: Update a website without telling the sales team, so that the customers can tell them what’s new in your product set.

Dumb Thing #2: Offer a better price to customers on the web site than the sales team can offer directly to the customers.

Dumb Thing #3: Hire more sales reps for a region than revenue from that region can support, so they’ll all compete for the same business.

Dumb Thing #4: Save all the best leads for the top rep and send the questionable ones to the other reps, just in case they might get lucky.

Dumb Thing #5: Insist that all contact info belongs to the company and demand all copies when the sales rep leaves the company.

Dumb Thing #6: Limit the sales reps’ access within your own firm to minor players so that they don’t “get in the hair” of top management.

Dumb Thing #7: Promise the reps good commissions but hold off paying them until the end of the quarter or the end of the fiscal year.

Dumb Thing #8: Make sure that the most popular products are unavailable to the reps, especially if demonstrating is key to closing a sale.

Dumb Thing #9: Spend big money on a sales and marketing campaign that has no tie-in to the products that the reps must actually sell.

READERS: I’m sure that above list isn’t complete. What needs to be added?