SellingBrew

Insights & Tips

Already a subscriber? Login

Become a subscriber and unlock an information arsenal focused on making your sales operation more effective.

The Trick that Gets Sales to Accept Constructive Criticism

When you’re running a sales operation, you often sit on the sidelines and watch the game play out. If you’ve done things right, you’ve equipped the team with what they need to win. But they’re the ones out on the field that need to run the plays and rack up the points.

Of course, after each game is over, you’re the one with the data to to analyze plays—see what went well and where improvements can be made. Unfortunately this is probably the most challenging hat to wear in Sales Ops.

Even the most affable sales reps can resent being told how to improve—especially when they’re being told how to improve deals they’ve already won. Maybe some analysis revealed that:

  • Deals were discounted more than they should have been
  • Logical cross- or up-sell products aren’t being sold
  • Customers aren’t ordering the volume they could be

When these problems are discovered, it seems logical to sit the sales reps down and review ways to improve next time…talk about what could have been done differently and ensure it doesn’t happen again. But what are the odds of them being receptive to those problems? Not very high…

Thankfully there’s a trick. When you’ve been able to analyze the data to come up with the problem, you don’t have to stop there. The problems you’ve found are likely just symptoms. Use those analytic skills that helped uncover the solution to reveal the root causes.  As much as we’d like to believe otherwise, most problems are caused by faulty systems and ineffective processes–not the reps themselves.

A popular diagnostic guide in The SellingBrew Playbook, Preventing Unprofitable Deals Before They Happen, does an excellent job of walking through the steps of diagnosing and understanding those root causes. But it also goes further with some helpful guidance on getting reps and the management team to actually take action when you discover what’s creating the problems in the first place.

So what’s the trick to get sales to accept constructive criticism? Don’t bother. Figure out the root cause and you can likely solve the problem without having to criticize the way those past deals were conducted. After all, your first job isn’t fixing the problem…it’s figuring out what the real problem is that needs fixing.

Get Immediate Access To Everything In The SellingBrew Playbook

Related Resources

  • How to Develop Real Competitive "Kill Sheets"

    Competitive kill sheets are a great tool to help salespeople in the field. But most so-called kill sheets are nothing more than glorified competitive profiles. In this concise tutorial, learn how to develop real, strategic competitive kill sheets that highlight and reinforce the competitive differences that actually matter to prospects.

    View This Tutorial
  • Selling Through Uncertainty

    As Sales Ops practitioners, we're expected to make weighty decisions with imperfect information. How do we "illuminate" the landscape a bit? What steps can we take to reduce the ambiguity, uncertainty, and risk?

    View This Webinar
  • Closing the Skills Gap in Sales Negotiations

    In this Expert Interview, Jason Levinson discusses the latest methods and innovations in negotiation training for salespeople. Closing the negotiation skills gap is not a hard as you might think!

    View This Interview
  • Negotiating Profitable Deals

    Everything comes to a head when your sales team negotiates a deal. You want to win, but you don't want to leave money on the table. So, how do you help your sales team to become better negotiators, so they win the deals they should, at the right price?

    View This Webinar