To most Sales Directors, the attainment of a permanent increase in sales revenues must seem like the search for eternal youth; unending and, ultimately, unavailing.

Our commercial functions, particularly the sales team, represent our forward line, if they are not scoring regularly we cannot possibly achieve our overall commercial objectives – i.e. nothing happens until somebody sells something and all of that investment in costly accounting software, new office equipment, expensive I.T systems etc. will count for nothing.

Sir John Harvey-Jones  in his best selling book, “All Together Now” said “Most companies fail not in their attempts to be innovative or creative. In this country most of them fail because they undervalue the importance of professional selling”

Unfortunately, the task of selling never becomes any easier and as competition continues to intensify, sales people will face issues that can be extremely difficult to deal with i.e. decreased product uniqueness, increased competition within ‘safe’ markets, longer sales cycles and shorter product life spans. Every organisation that intends to survive in the re-engineered environment which will arrive post-recession, must respond to those realities.

Millions of pounds are spent every year investigating and pursuing ways to grow sales; this is not surprising, after all, sales are the lifeblood of any organisation. Yet only a small percentage of companies have been able to grow their sales steadily, not just in good times, but in recession years too, and in the face of ferocious competition.

A careful study of the vast majority of companies that have been less successful than these few “superstars” shows that they fall prey to a number of common mistakes. By contrast, the few have consistently grown their sales and succeeded because they discovered that there is no one single initiative that guarantees success – in fact there are FIVE.

This week, starting tomorrow, I will be discussing these five key challenges and offering advice on how to meet them.

Today’s News: Congratulations to Steven Rosen whose excellent article “5 Ways To Gauge Your Sales Manager’s Coaching” was voted “Top Sales Article” for August over at Top 10 Sales Articles

He now goes forward to the “Top Sales Article Of The Year” final – winner will be announced on New Years Eve – and joins a very distinguished collection of sales experts, who have alraedy made it through, including: Keith Rosen, Waldo Waldman, Patricia Fripp, Nancy Bleeke, Dave Kurlan, Kendra Lee and Drew Stevens. So just four more place up for grabs.

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