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

Now that christmas is over and the snow’s melted many retailers are counting the costs of a poor trading season. Next, Waterstones and HMV have all announced fewer sales compared to the same time last year and store closures are expected. With families feeling the VAT rises and inflationary pressures sales are unlikely to improve quickly.

Many companies have been telling me that 2011 will be the year where sales will be vital to survival. The tactic to improve sales team results seems to be to increase targets and take the sales team on an away day to “align sales with core functions and client needs for the next twelve months”.

In my experience, away days where management sweeten a bitter pill of increased sales targets and restructured sales territories with “improved and innovative marketing initiatives” don’t increase motivation nor improve the way sales people approach potential customer’s needs and certainly don’t last more than a week, far less twelve months.

If one must have an away day then it needs to be linked with a measured programme of change that covers a long period and where changes in direction can be identified and implemented more easily.