In my interim sales management and consulting assignments I have found 53 reasons why sales commonly falter in most companies. I will be publishing them over the coming five weeks in installments; this is the third installment. If you can’t wait to see the "rest of the story," take advantage of the offer at the bottom of our home page for the full list.

1. Are the right salespeople selling for you? Do you have a "commodity product" salesperson selling on price and delivery for a long-term "consultative" sale? Even worse, do you have the reverse? Test the salesperson to match the personality or sales skills you need to the type of product you have to sell. Be especially vigilant in your hiring process. If your product has an average sales price of $1000 and the sales cycle is 60 days or less, you should avoid a salesperson that has a history of selling high ticket items with a sales cycles of 6 months to a year; the reverse is also true.

2. Are the salespeople properly trained? Have they had product training? Retraining? More importantly have your salespeople attended actual sales training classes based on their abilities? Have you tested them to see where they need help? Salespeople are like athletes, they need constant training which includes how to over-come objections, relationship building, telephone sales skills, product training, over-coming price as an objection, etc.

3. Has the inside sales group had the same sales training as the outside representatives? From sales skill training to product training, too many inside salespeople are ignored and not treated on an equal basis with outside representatives. And yet we know that the inside salesperson has more rejection, must sell without the benefit of seeing a buyer body language, etc. Inside salespeople need as much if not more continuous training than outside salespeople.

4. Are sales territories properly aligned? Is there the same sales potential in each territory? The same number of potential customers? Have you set up the territories based on geographic barriers, drive time, etc?

5. Are there activity quotas that contribute to goal attainment? Activity quotas are habits and actions that you have found that when repeated often enough will lead to a predictable sales outcome. For instance, number of cold calls per day, number of live appointments per week, enumber of proposals, etc.

6. Risking too much with hockey stick sales performance? Hockey stick performers deliver sales in the last week or two of a quarter. If a majority of the salespeople do this you have 50% of more of your sales coming in during this last two weeks. This puts pressure on shipping and creates undue risk if the performers don't perform. Pay bonuses monthly for making quota and stop this risky practice.

7. Tracking the sales pipeline? Do you know the ratio of proposals or outstanding quotes in the pipeline to closed sales? Do top performers have a bigger pipe? Do you factor the pipeline dollars to be able to predict the future sales? Get away from spreadsheets and run to that CRM system you bought last year but never got around to setting up the forecasting reports.

8. Are district and regional sales managers risking as much as the salespeople? Is the sales incentive plan for sales management mirrored to the plan for the salespeople? The closer you get management aligned with salespeople the better and more consistent your results will be. The sales manager must have monthly and quarterly goals just like the salespeople.

9. Are the sales coaches (regional and district sales managers) spending enough time with their salespeople? Are the coaches shouting from the sidelines or are they in the field listening and coaching salespeople to excel?

10. Where are the salespeople spending their time? Have you measured hour by hour where salespeople are spending their time? Is it in the office, behind a windshield, on service problems, on the telephone, in meetings, on in front of new prospects? Make changes to increase the face-to-face selling time.