How to Prevent Friction Amongst Sales Representatives

• Proper Delegation, Remember That Sales Teams Will Fight Internally

Due to inept management, many sales employees (along with the company's bottom line) suffer from inappropriate delegation of accounts and / or territories.

This failure to designate could happen for a number of reasons.

One big threat to sales team organization is the members of management being unwilling to be the "bad guy" and failing to appropriately step in when there is internal argument between the reps.

This type of passive behavior allows the sales representatives to do as they please with accounts and, in time, creates a grey area when it comes to what lead belongs to whom.

What to do?

The moment that this type of argument begins between sales reps. at a company regarding a deal and any resulting commission, management must come to terms with the fact that they have a problem that can potentially spread like wildfire in the organization. Do whatever it takes to stop it right there.

The best way to ensure that the sales team is working together to close client accounts, instead of fighting one another for commission and business, is to reward the sales employees who are producing first, the ones who are up and coming 2nd and then, if necessary, take away some territories from those who are not working as hard or who are not learning from their own mistakes and successes.

Regardless of the action that you take, management must take some form of action and implement some form of change around the office whether it be putting up a map regarding territories or even changing titles of some of the sales reps.

Have an open forum. Nothing is achieved behind closed doors. This is especially true when the sales reps. with whom you will be speaking privately don't trust one another in the 1st place.

• Personality and Cohesion Are Crucial

Because any form of management is an inexact science, you want put the proper people in place from the onset rather than have to deal with internal friction sometime in the future. It's not always implemented as easy as it is said (or written), but take the following advice:

If you ask the top HR executives in this country, they will be the first to tell you that over diversity (whether it be age, sex or race) within a sales force can actually will hinder the productivity of the team.

After managing people born in over 4 countries, I have come to see that the employees with similar backgrounds tend to work better with each other because they can understand one another better.

This doesn't mean that you want a team of late 30 males all from Nebraska, but you don't want the opposite either.

How people mesh in the workplace and how they enjoy one another's company can determine employee growth, better forecast turnover rates and will create an atmosphere that is focused on moving ahead, not dealing with current internal problems.

Clients are more apt to buy from engaging, outgoing, affable sales people. Because of the fact that clients can tell when something is wrong, keeping the team happy with not only the company and yourself, but with one another as well factors into their well-being and ability to generate revenue.

As a client, wouldn't you be more apt to buy from a company who had a "Team" on your account?