by Liberty Johnson

Created on: May 20, 2008

In the last several years, I have worked in sales and customer service for both small and corporate businesses. I have seen plenty of blunders from good businesses with the most experienced management in their industries not making the right decisions to down-right greedy acts.

The biggest blunder in business is unreasonable expectations of your sales department. That's right, I said it. In a recent job search, I have seen ads for sales professionals with the expectation of 100% closure. Who has 100% closure, and if they have 100% closure what is their cancelation rate, number of complaints to management about misrepresentation, and how high is their turn over rate of customers? I worked for a guy who started a specialty marketing company in the 1970's and sold in the late 1990's with over 60 million in sales a year. We considered him a master in sales and you guessed ithe did not have 100% closing. I don't think that makes him a failure but someone who had a vision and managed to keep his head of the clouds. If you are currently expanding your sales force, beware of those claiming 100% as they may be lying or willing to misrepresent your company's products or services which will cause you many problems in client retention and satisfaction later on down the road. Another sign of trouble is the constant hiring of sales people. The happier sales team, the more valuable they become with each passing year.

Another blunder is depending too much on your sales team and not having a sufficient budget for marketing and advertising. Depending on how long your company has been in business it may be time to revisit your Business Plan and think of ways to update.

Ask yourself the following questions:

What is your current market penetration compared to your current competitors?
What are your competitors currently doing to battle the challenges of the recession and how can you compete with this?
What kinds of marketing and advertising are they doing?
How hard is your website working for the company? You do have a website right?
How much do you know about SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how have you been applying this towards the content on your site?
How much are you currently spending on online advertising and what affiliations do you have?
How many leads or sales are you getting through your website and how are you handling them? Are you taking credit for them or giving your employees a chance to cash in towards sales bonuses and commission? Giving your employees a chance will make them happy perhaps scoring you bigger and better sales deals from those internet leads.

This might seem obvious to some but others this could be the difference between staying in business and letting the competition squash your current or future control in your particular market. Even if this is obvious are you doing it?

How are you managing your Customer Service Department? If you are giving out refunds like candy or loosing a high volume of customers, it may be time to reconsider how your departments are being managed. This could be from sales representatives over selling to poor attitudes in your customer service employees. Perhaps you're not stressing company policies and communicating them enough. Get involved and find ways to meet your clients half way instead of throwing in the towel. Maybe look to improve some of your policies.

Most importantly, it's not too late to improve your organization by learning from these common mistakes.

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