provided by: 
This is the third and final installment in my little series on the kind of excuses I hear from underperforming salespeople. This last example is the salesperson who would be doing much better if the printing company had greater capabilities. "There's so much work out there that we just can't produce," is the excuse I hear.
"So you can't sell wide-format work which you're perfectly equipped for," I respond, "but you could sell four-color offset or some other kind of work if you had the equipment. Is that what you're telling me?" The salespeople don't always see the contradiction, but I hope you will.
Wide-format printing can be described as a market segment. Another way to express that is that it's a niche market. If it were a tiny niche or segment, I'd be encouraging wide-format printers to expand their capabilities as a top priority. It's a large and growing niche/segment, though, so I'm more inclined to encourage printers—and salespeople—to expand their market penetration. In other words, there's plenty of work out there that fits your capabilities, and plenty people who buy it. Focus on that!
I also remind salespeople that the definition of a fully qualified prospect starts with them buying exactly what you're best equipped to sell. If their needs don't match your capabilities, they're simply not prospects! "You have a job with a company which specializes in wide-format and reprographics printing," I told one salesperson recently. "If you want to sell long-run, full-color offset printing, you need to get a job with a different printing company. If you want to continue to work for this company, you really need to stop making excuses and get to work finding people who buy what you're equipped to sell!"
Don't Tolerate Excuses!
That takes us to the bottom line for this series. Don't tolerate excuses from underperforming, underachieving salespeople! If you let them hide behind excuses, their performance will never improve.
Part of a manager's job is to separate the problems from the excuses. If you identify real operational problems that are holding your salespeople back, then those problems have to be corrected. If they're only excuses, though, well, then you have an entirely different problem.
I think it's worth mentioning that a significant percentage of the printing salespeople I meet are not very well suited to the job. Some of their deficiencies can be addressed with training and better management, but some of them are uncorrectable. If you employ the wrong person for any job, I hope you at least have your eyes and ears open for a better candidate. I've always found it interesting that most printers are usually somewhere in the process of upgrading their equipment, but rarely in the process of upgrading their employees.
Dave Fellman is the president of David Fellman & Associates, Cary, NC, a sales and marketing consulting firm serving numerous segments of the graphic arts industry. Contact Dave by phone at 800/325-9634; by fax at 919/363-4069; or by e-mail at dmf@davefellman.com. Visit his website at www.davefellman.com.
author: BY DAVID FELLMAN