10 Most Common Sales Manager Mistakes

You'll find the following list of the ten most common mistakes made by sales managers toward the very end of Kevin Davis' book, Slow Down, Sell Faster!, about how to sync your sales approach with your customer's buying process:

1. Failing to shift from "super salesperson" mode to managerial mindset.
2. Fighting fires continually.
3. Leaving your staff to sink or swim on their own.
4. Ignoring the importance of performance standards/getting blind-sided by poor performance.
5. Failing to leverage the strengths and resources of your team's top producers.
6. Spending too much time working with the bottom 20 percent.
7. Allowing senior salespeople to get stuck in an unmotivated rut.
8. Being inconsistent in your recruiting and hiring process.
9. Assuming your sales reps will figure things out the same way you did.
10. Hanging on to low-producing salespeople for far too long.

The chapter on coaching for sales success is well worth the price of the book by itself, but fortunately, the rest of the 250-pages provide helpful lessons on how to perfectly match your sales process with the customer's buying process.

Davis explains in Slow Down, Sell Faster! that:

• Customers usually award the prize to the salesperson who has been there through every step of their buying process, meeting customer need after customer need by presenting the right information at the right time.

I also found particularly useful the book's topics on:

• Selling to multiple decision makers
• Making a complex sale
• Getting more first appointments
• Uncovering needs to establish the value of your solutions
• Resolving a buyer's fears
• Negotiating win-win agreements
• Cultivating customer satisfaction and loyalty
• Becoming a strong competitor

Thanks to the author for providing me an advance copy of his book.