This past week I’ve spent with friends and our after dinner discussion was the state of the economies of Europe and the affects of the high street. Economic problems and affecting sales at HMV, Waterstones, Thornton’s chocolates, Comet and so on and the impact is felt further down the supply chain.

Strikes by National Union of Teachers and Public Services Unions as well as others create further downturn in sales as confidence in the future falls. My friends are mostly owners of small businesses and discussions focussed on how to reduce the effects of strikes and falling confidence on sales.

Restructuring sales teams
When sales fall most businesses cut out unnecessary expenditure and restructure the sales and marketing team. Often this means reducing the size of the team but one friend of mine has actually increased the size of his team and has increased sales. We had worked on the plan together and so I’m delighted by his success and he expressed enthusiasm for thee video below that helped him consider the salesperson he was looking for.

Sales and Marketing interview questions

Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine who leads a sales team about his plans for the coming year. He outlined significant change for his team and quoted targets, market penetration and corporate expectations to cope with the difficuties that will befall all sales teams in 2011 with great ease and I will admit to being very impressed.

After a short time it seemed to me, however, that he was talking about the “Sales Team” as if it was one unit instead of a group of individuals with different attitudes, work expectations and personal goals. When I asked how the individuals in his team would react to the plans I was surprised by the answer. “Some won’t like it but there will be no choice”.

He was forgetting that a team isn’t like a machine with a series of machine cogs that when turned on rotate at the same pace and produce what’s required. Instead it’s ensuring that a group of spinning plates keep turning on their sticks and impress the audience at the dexterity of the man in charge. some of the plates will turn faster than others and possibly a couple will be in danger of falling off their sticks.

Maria has been at her new company for a month and seems to have settled in well, although her team have some reservations around issues of trust. They see her as being self-promotional as opposed to a “team advocate”.

Over this last few days Maria has been working with the CEO and Sales Director to look at restructuring teams. With the drop in sales resulting from the depression certain posts are now seen as being redundant. Maria is advising on how this can best be done and a strategy for implementation.

Some sales teams will disappear altogether and some will be merged into others. The first announcements will be made towards the end of next week. The objective is to have the new teams in place for early next year after a staff consultation period.

To prepare the necessary paperwork Maria has chosen to work with two of her more junior team members. Her assistant managers are wondering why this is the case and if there is a “hidden agenda” to Maria’s actions.