Jim Pancero

Do you have any independent manufacturing reps selling for you and your company? A lot of sales organizations, especially distributors and equipment manufacturers, use independent sales reps as part of their territory coverage in areas they don’t have as stronger a presence as they’d like or where they can’t afford a full-time sales rep to be covering.

One of the best ways to grow sales is by prospecting. But in too many companies, prospecting is more of an after-thought whenever reps have any extra time to go after any new accounts. Prospecting is rarely an ongoing and consistent component of most sales rep’s weekly selling plans.

A client recently had a major crisis. One of their top sales reps left going to work for a competitor. When my client checked out what was happening in that departing rep’s territory, they discovered they had little usable information. 

Too many sales leaders do little to help their reps improve their objection-handling skills. How much coaching and training have you invested lately in how to best handle the most common objections being heard by your team?

The reality is most companies do a really weak job onboarding a new employee. Too many organizations put little thought into this even though they are potentially impacting the motivational environment of their organization.