Expectations are meeting the reality of fear
When the gap between “the number in your head” and sales staff communications leading is too large, it can lead to saying “not what I expected”. Let’s face it the world economy had a great run since the depths of 2008. It was an era of price reductions, steadily better price/performance.
The current era’s reversals of lowering prices and better performance is understandably causing friction between sales staff and buyers. Buyer fears stoked by this reversal can throw previously uncommon challenges into the sales cycle.
Though experienced sale staffs have encountered similar situations, most likely, it didn’t happen often. Even top performers through a combination of luck and timing largely avoided customer fear of the “economy”. Each sales group needs to consider if skills training, marketing/messaging, or product/service packaging will help overcome prospects fears. Top performers should be included in any enablement efforts.
Executive management needs performance from sales at a time when new adjustments in expectations might change their numbers and performance metrics. In a year where a $1 dollar in revenue in January is worth only 92 cents in November, executive management must come to an understanding how financial information and expectations will be communicated and evaluated. Management hates the work, just as sales hates to have quotas and gates adjusted upwards in the middle of a year. Internal expectations of cost pressures, supply restrictions, and inflation-adjusted sales quotas have to be integrated. Expectations have to explicitly be adjusted to the new inflationary reality as soon as possible to avoid bad results.
The first two pieces in this series are "The Number in Your Head is Wrong" and "Estimates are off - You can find them at www.ekalore.com/blog-1
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