How Indecisiveness Undermines Sales and Sales Leadership Effectiveness

If you are driving in your car, looking at your phone, fiddling with your radio, looking at people on the sidewalk, weaving in and out of traffic or speeding because you’re in a hurry, you are probably not a very good driver and bad things will happen.

If you have a pile of files on your desk, a to-do list that is so long it must be scrolled to read, past-due proposals, and an empty pipeline, you are probably not very well organized, don’t manage your time very well, and likely behind on quota.

These are things we do that prevent us from being as effective as we could be or need to be. There is another one we should discuss, and that’s when a sales leader has a Non-Supportive Buy Cycle with an attribute of needing to think things over.  In the 4-minute video below, which you must watch to understand the concept, I explain how the indecisiveness of a sales leader prevents them from being able to develop, coach up and grow their sales team.  As you continue reading, I also explain how it impacts their salespeople.

Pretty amazing, isn’t it?

The same concept derails salespeople too.  Not just the need to think it over, but especially when they shop around, look for the best price, or think a relatively small amount of money is a lot.  When appearing as a negative, those three attributes prevent salespeople from selling value.  Sure, they understand value from an intellectual standpoint, but they are asking prospects to behave in a way that contradicts how they normally behave.  They find it very difficult to defend the value when they wouldn’t buy the value themselves.

Fortunately, when salespeople fix their Non-Supportive Buy Cycles, their sales increase by an incredible 50%.  Buy Cycle is one of 21 Sales Core Competencies and you can see all 21, the data behind them, and even how you compare, by clicking here.  But all of this talk about Buy Cycle is a conversation that we already had in another article.

Back to the sales leaders.  Not being decisive is not the only belief/behavior that would prevent a sales leader from effectively coaching up a salesperson.  Unfortunately, there are dozens of others and the more of them a sales leader possesses, the more ineffective they will be.

It’s hard enough to get sales leaders to coach consistently.  When they do, they typically see a 28% increase in their team’s revenue.

It’s even more difficult to get sales leaders to coach consistently and effectively.  When they do they typically see a 42% increase in their team’s revenue.

But when we have a sales leader who is willing to coach and coach the right way, it’s a shame when they have beliefs that get in the way.  Want some help?

Image copyright 123RF