Trap 1 – choosing skills over values:
Many managers ignore the value of corporate DNA; The set of values which are the common denominator of all people in the company, required attitudes and value discipline.  They rather go for the candidates with the best skills on their curriculum. Skills can be thought. Choosing DNA-match above skills-match will make sure you have the right people on board for the future. It will enable management to focus on customers and business challenges rather than on managing people and their behavior.

Trap 2 – neglecting training and development:
Dirk Verhaeghe told me that his first sales manager once told him: ‘If you think training is expensive, try ignorance’. Many managers tend to think of training as very expensive in money and time (keeping sales people away from customers);

Tip: However, I look at training as an investment; an investment with both short term and long term ROI. Appreciation for the  investment in their development. Motivation of your staff. Long term, training & development will make them better performers. Nobody is born a top performer, not in any discipline in life be it sports, business or art. We all need to exercise and train to become better. Sales people need to be continuously trained on:
• Skills (right skills to talk to decision makers)
• The customers environment
• The value proposition and your solution portfolio (pains, capabilities, ROI, enablers, differentiation and benefits)

Must do: Make sure you have an experience sharing platform where best practices are created and kept up to date, experiences are shared, etc…

Trap 3 – quick revenue panic:
When under pressure, a lot of managers tend to turn to tactical stand-alone actions to bring in quick revenue and squeeze their pipeline. Needless to say, that lot’s of stand-alone actions creates de-focus, lowers people engagement and will cause more pain than gain. 

Tip:

• Narrow your focus;
• Dominate your market;
• Choose your battles;
• Have a balanced pipeline;
• Support your people.

Trap 4 – Specialists are the best managers for specialists:
A mistake often made is to promote the best performing account manager into the role of sales managers. This is never the best way to maximizing your potential. It takes a different skill-set to be a good manager.

Tip: Promote an account manager choosing or ready for a managerial role in another department to take on a first management experience rather than promoting them to sales manager.

Trap 5 – hiring a sales person to do a marketing job and much more:
In many companies sales are asked to:

• Seek the right prospect;
• Build the right pitch;
• Know the market
• Know the competition
• Know the full product portfolio
• Be experts in called calling
• Draft their own proposals
• Close deals
• Keep a long term relation

Obviously very few people are capable of doing all these things.
Tip: Create a marketing function and a support environment build upon best practices and have sales focus on developing qualified leads, closing deals and/or develop existing accounts.

In other words build a scalable organisation!