4 Steps To Take When Your Sales Force “Doesn’t Get It”

As marketers, we spend a great deal of time and money developing brands and positioning products in such a way as to differentiate ourselves from our competitors and motivate customers and prospects to take action.

We agonize over the details of each ingredient in the marketing mix, every link in the value-delivery chain, to make sure we turn interest into action. Global branding into gross margin. Sales promotions into sales leads.

And when we’ve done our jobs well, those sales leads turn into honest-to-goodness sales calls, where our rep shows up, details the product perfectly, hits all the pre-scripted selling points, overcomes objections like a champ, and closes the sale on the first call.

Or not.

Too often our finely crafted brand promise gets broken at the point of sale by reps who don’t fully understand what it means. A meticulously hewn marketing message turns to mush. A highly differentiated (or so you thought) premium positioning turns into a price play. Sales are lost. Or worse yet, made in such a way as to erode margins and cheapen the brand.

Assuming that your reps aren’t inept (which, unfortunately, can happen) and aren’t intentionally trying to torpedo the brand and denigrate margins (which, despite what you may think, rarely happens), what do you do when your sales force doesn’t get it?

Accept your share of the blame: Did you do everything you could to make sure the brand positioning and marketing messages got translated to a coherent sales message? Did you work with your counterparts in sales and sales training to make sure that training initiatives aligned with marketing expectations? Did you get in and get your hands dirty in the sales training process? Did you listen to sales feedback to refine the selling message?
Adjust expectations: When theoretical marketing expectations clash with real-world market experiences something’s gotta give. And reality trumps theory. So if your sales force isn’t able to articulate your message—or if that message, when accurately articulated makes customers shrug—it’s time to reassess and readjust. Are value propositions really of value? Are marketing materials motivational? Is your assessment of the market potential and market attractiveness of your product accurate? What do you need to change and how quickly can you change it?
Align incentives: Ultimately, all sales people are money-motivated and coin-operated. No matter how well-defined your brand may be, how well constructed your communications plans may be, misaligned incentives can thwart the success of any product or brand marketing effort. Have you worked with your counterparts on the sales team to make sure sales incentives are in synch with marketing objectives?
Accelerate adoption: Quickly addressing the disconnect between marketing expectations and sales force performance is the key to getting product adoption and revenue generation back on track and moving in the right direction. Embrace the concept of fast failure. Stay close to the market, learn from missteps, make changes quickly, and keep focused on the teamwork and collaboration required for success.

Face it, dealing with sales people is messy. Heck, dealing with people in general is messy.

But if you do everything you can to make sure the sales team is prepared and incentivized to carry the right message to the masses, failure is not an option.