19 Months!

By Dave Stein, CEO

Recent research tells us the average tenure of a sales manager/VP is 19 months. That's down from 24 months a year ago. Why is that? Well, it's not because all those VPs and managers are doing such a good job that they decide to retire with their pockets stuffed with money. Periodically I speak with a sales VP who has been at the same job for 10 or even 20 years, and consistently over-delivers against quota. But it is increasingly rare.

The fact is that a large percentage of sales managers and VPs are just not delivering [cut: to] on their commitments. Think about this: The sales department of most organizations lags other departments in the areas of compliance in documented processes (think GAAP for accounting and ISO 9000 for manufacturing), performance measurement, technology support, and in many cases the employment of best practices.

Here are reasons that some sales managers and VPs serve 19-month stints:

* They use sales training to fill an open day at your kickoff meeting.
* They don't have a documented, institutionalized sales methodology.
* They allow every sales person to have his own approach to selling.
* They think that having only 5 or 10 sales people is a good reason to not have processes.
* They don't provide technology support and tools for their sales people that help them win business.
* They hire whom they believe are winners and then neglect to train them.
* They hire on instinct without carefully matching candidates to the job.
* They depend on internal training resources or external training providers that just don't get the job done.

...and the list goes on.

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