Top 10 Sales Best Practices Ignored by Sales Teams

Suppose a new parent brought their baby home for the first time.  Their new responsibilities include having properly fastened car seats, scheduled feedings and diaper changes, burping, bathing, holding, rocking, nurturing, strolling, talking, teaching, playing, and more.

What would you say to a new parent who chose to avoid responsibilities like the car seat, feedings, and diaper changes?  What would you say if you learned they weren’t holding and bathing their new-born?  What would you do if they didn’t hold, rock, and nurture their infant?

Best Practices, by definition, are the responsibilities, steps, tasks, behaviors, processes, and systems that are proven to achieve the best results.  Unfortunately, many people confuse best practices with the practices that are most comfortable, convenient, or simple for them to do.

For example, I love to write, but it’s not a sales best practice.  It’s a marketing best practice, and I know the difference between the two.

I have watched sales leadership and salespeople cherry-pick their best practices, prioritizing those which they agree with and can imagine themselves comfortably doing, over those which consistently achieve the best results.  When salespeople do this, it is because sales management does little to stop it due to either agreeing with the choices or because they aren’t strong enough to follow sales management best practices of holding salespeople accountable.  When sales managers do this, it is similarly because sales leadership either agrees with the choices or aren’t strong enough to follow sales leadership best practices of holding their sales managers accountable.

We can easily move that up one level and state that when sales leadership doesn’t enforce best practices across the entire sales organization, it is allowed to continue because the CEO either isn’t aware that best practices aren’t being followed, doesn’t care, or, as we’ve already stated above, agrees with the choices.

Failure to follow best sales practices will not be judged by God in the same light as a failure to follow the Ten Commandments, but it’s safe to say that the percentage of participation in is on par.

The top ten best practices that sales teams frequently ignore include, but aren’t limited to:

1. Following sales process
2. Meeting Decision Makers Early in the Sales Process
3. Thorough Qualifying
4. Comprehensive Discovery
5. Sales Coaching
6. Sales Accountability
7. Sales Pipeline Reviews
8. Prospecting to Meet KPIs
9. Saying No to Unqualified Proposals and Quotes
10. Being Proactive Rather than Reactive to RFPs

It’s time.

The people working in sales teams are not babies and don’t need to be taken care of as babies do.  However, by shunning best practices for comfort and convenience, they are behaving like babies.