20 Harsh Enterprise Sales Leadership Truths

WARNING – FEELING SPICY? 

We’ll say the quiet parts out loud so you don’t have to. Here are 20 Hard Sales Leadership Truths that every leader needs to hear (and act on). Let’s dive in:

1. By the time most AEs approach their manager to approve a discount, the negotiation with the customer is already over. (Read the white paper: Winning without Discounting)
2. High rep churn signals you have a front-line manager coaching problem. Great reps leave bad managers at good companies.
3. For every tool you add to your sales tech stack, you should take one out.
4. If you’re managing your sales team from pipeline and forecasting alone, you’re looking in the rear-view mirror. (You can see “What?” and “When?”, but not “Why?” and “How?”)
5. AEs are over-trained on product and under-trained on business acumen and advanced selling skills.
6. Most enterprise leaders leave an easy 5% of revenue on the table because they don’t invest time in creating a discounting and negotiation methodology.
7. If your sales commission scheme doesn’t punish unnecessary discounting, you’ll get unnecessary discounting.
8. Most sales VPs talk a good game on coaching, but very few really take it seriously.
9. Most sales teams have trained their customers to put them under pressure at quarter-end to drive more discounting.
10. Front-line sales managers are rarely given the training and tools they need to become great coaches.
11. Most VPs spend too much time tracking activity, and not enough time looking at the quality of work on the front line.
12. Too much time is spent on account planning; not enough is spent on ensuring the team can execute.
13. The biggest single process gap in most enterprise sales teams is the lack of robust pre-call planning methodology for critical meetings. (Check out our eBook on how to deploy effective pre-call planning for your enterprise sales team)
14. Most reps negotiate with themselves. Smart customers know that late-quarter discounts are artificial and will generally be available next quarter.
15. The first 2 minutes of a customer meeting are massively influential on the success of the rest of it. Most reps waste this opportunity.
16. The personal motivations of the key decision makers in a deal matter more than the organizational ones.
17. Enterprise deals are won and lost on the front end, where the problem being fixed gets defined.
18. The later you bring procurement into the deal, the harder it gets.
19. If your sales team doesn’t know how to monetize value through the sale, you’re being commoditized.
20. Some of your best salespeople are also the laziest. Stop worrying about it.