Situation: Several CEOs have experienced difficulty establishing accountability within their sales teams. Sone sales reps consistently come up with excuses for not generating new accounts or meeting their sales objectives. The impact of lost sales had significant effects on revenue performance. How do you establish sales accountability?
Advice from the CEOs:
• It is vital to understand who are the best customers and most profitable products and services for those customers. Establish regular sales meetings to discuss customers, products and services, to identify promising sales opportunities and to coordinate sales efforts.
• Work with both sales management and individual team members to determine desired outcomes:
 Set sales targets – work with the team to establish firm expectations on reasonable and achievable sales targets. Agree on a tracking system to measure progress toward those targets. Encourage members of the team to work together to achieve the targets.
 Customer type – who are they, what are their priorities and expectations, and how can the company best address these.
 Product(s) – work with the team to determine which products best fit each customer type and develop creative ways to position those products to increase sales.
• Establish measurable behaviors which if done will result in success. For example:
 Calls per week and results of those calls.
 Relationships with key decision makers and development of additional relationships within existing and potential customers.
 Thorough qualification before quoting, presenting, demo, and so on. The who, what and why that connects with successful sales..

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