The Sales Curmudgeon: Your Unrealistic Expectations

This is the fifth of a five-part series where I essentially predict your future, and give you the top reasons why your sales initiative will blow up. Forewarned is forearmed. 

Today’s blog is about the fifth reason you will probably fail your mission: your scope is unrealistic. In other words, you try to ram ten pounds of stuff into a five pound bag. 

Reason #5 Your Initiative Will Fail:
Ten Pounds of Stuff

So here’s the setting: the sales team is busting hind end to hit the year-end number, you’re trying desperately to outrun attrition, and your personal life is a train-wreck.

Then one day you wake up into the manic apex of your bipolar world and announce a five-day, global sales kickoff in Vegas. Or perhaps Orlando. Your target date is still a month away - plenty of time to crank out an agenda and book travel for several hundred people.

So you assemble your directs and sell your vision. Ignoring the sick look on their faces, you reassure them that this is a priority and that you will clear your calendar to make it work.

And then a squirrel runs by and you take flight.

So your peeps huddle together, scared and alone, to operationalize your madness. The result is predictable. A half-baked sales kickoff that barely comes together and is chock-full of speeches, award ceremonies, product demos, bar bills and sales training. 

This is the only time the whole team gets together, so you have to shove everything in there. Twelve hour days? Sorry, no choice. Sorry also about the weekend travel. No choice there either. Two fatal flaws here: not enough time to get it right and too much stuff.

The first guy I ever worked for in the civilian world was a partner at Price Waterhouse. He taught me an important lesson of project management that has served me well over the years. He boiled it down to three words:

1. Scope
2. Time
3. Resources

You need two to get to the third. If you fix the scope and resources, you’ll know the time required. Lock the scope and timeline, and you end up with a resource load. But at some point, you can’t just throw bodies at the problem (e.g., nine women can’t have a baby in a month). Anyway, you need to respect the three dimensions of scope, time, and resources … or you’ll take a hit on the hidden fourth dimension, quality.

A classic mistake that sales leaders make in planning for a sales kickoff (SKO) is that they don’t appreciate the critical path of activities required to actually pull it off. So they end up cutting corners and pulling it out at the last minute, which kills the impact of the event and sets a bad example.

My advice here? Temper your bold vision with the advice of operatives who know how to execute.

Listen to your implementers. Assuming they’re competent, of course. Ask them about scope, time and resources. If they just look at you, get new implementers and cancel the SKO. 

Even if you manage to pull it together, the second fatal flaw may kick in: too much information in too little time. Twelve hour days of non-stop PowerPoints. Boring and hardly memorable. 

People learn in small bites, not big gulps. It’s better to limit the scope of what you roll, and then reinforce it over time through your chain-of-command. Again, listen to your handlers. They’ll know how much is too much.

Sometimes you are your worst enemy. You wait too long to care about something, which creates a goat rodeo for others. A great idea is only great if you have it in time to execute well. Care about things sooner. Think about those who do your bidding.

So how big is your bag? If it’s only five pounds, then that’s the limit of what you can shove in. Otherwise, you make a big mess when it bursts. A mess that others will end up cleaning.

Speaking of bursting, I hope I didn’t burst your fragile ego with this blog series. Actually, I take that back. I hope I did. I hope I made you think about all the landmines that are out there - many of which you set yourself, consciously or unconsciously. Hear me people: most of your wounds are self-inflicted.

Hope you’re okay with me holding up the mirror. If not, I’m good with that too. As a sales management veteran, I’ve made a nice living cleaning other people’s messes.

That’s Why I Am The Sales Curmudgeon.

The Sales Curmudgeon is a sales management veteran who has suffered countless sales initiatives. He knows why some projects succeed wildly and others fail miserably. Experience has taught him that very few leaders will risk what it takes to make a real difference.