367 Dealing with Organisational Distractions When Selling

<p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">We have all seen it – the pendulum swings of organisational change.  You can basically break out your stopwatch and get the timing down perfectly.  The new CEO arrives and reverses whatever the predecessor was doing.  If things had been centralised, now everything will be decentralised. Then here we are five years later, another CEO and we reverse course again.  In the sales area, the goalposts keep moving.  The raw numbers chase may now be leavened with big numbers, but from a better quality of client, as we move more up market.  Or it may be that we spread the risks, by having a lot of middle level clients, rather than being too exposed and dependent on the big fish and our occasional whales.  Or it may be profit, rather than market share, is the Holy Grail of the moment.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">There is no doubt that these types of changes are distracting for salespeople.  We get into a rhythm, and we are well organised and then next thing a big change swings through and we have to re-organise our lives and clients.  We may have a campaign to get behind which alters how we have been working.  It may impact the pricing, as we trade profitability for volume or the other way around.  We may be on a mission to increase the number of new clients and bulk up the sales funnel.</span><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU"> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">One of the issues is that these distractions take our eye off the ball with our clients.  We are suddenly wrapped up in admin activities and our time for prospecting is being diminished with endless meetings, new systems and more reporting requirements.  Most salespeople are big picture expressive types. They hate the admin, the forms, the inputting, the detail focus. They feel they could be better off spending their time with buyers.</span></p> <p class="MsoNormal"><span lang="EN-AU" xml:lang="EN-AU">We may get a new Section or Divisi