Leaders: Listen to Your Salespeople!

Product Knowledge, Selling Skill and Presentation Skills are basics for being successful Sales Personnel. 

@ hemanth thanks for expressing your true feeling. I can understand the problem of the sales people. 

@ alka nice insight, thanks for sharing. It was really amazing.  

Sales Execs are the True Ambassadors of the Company.
Solid Article.....Thanks !

Sales .... Bottomline of all verticals!! Sales is generally not taken too seriously because people believe in the fact that if the concept wasnt right, sales would never happen OR if the service wasnt where it is the customer wouldnt have been retained... Common grounds for internal superiority... its fair!!

But many do not realise that IMPLEMENTING THE CONCEPT and EXECUTING or EFFECTING the PRODUCT SALES is the basic responsibility of the Sales force and they do it to the T! What Sales people achieve in the field is RELATIONSHIP with the consumer and that is the root of all things called bottomline!!Management including Marketing and Servicing have to closely listen to the interaction between the Sales and the customer as it will always be insightful and will affordt the company a way forward all the time. Sales are the first point contact between the real customer and the company bigwigs.. They know and they will always know .... FIRST! 

Beautiful article as always Alka :))

Being a practical sales person i have learnt a lot from my experiences and i always try to be in the foot of others whether they are my sales people or customers. I do agree that most of the companies they just want figures on the boardroom but never talk about satisfaction of sales people and their needs which i do agree can do miracles with sales figure numbers and as you rightly said people change, management change so one should never let his heart down and keep working for change. if you dont you will also become like them. As a good sales person when we are patient listening to customers same way we should be patient listening to our sales force and who knows they can come out with better ideas. Team work is important and the issues should be sorted out in consultation with them so that they understand that they aslo belong to company and company hears them.

Sales people are voice of customers/ endusers. Need to take thier views..

I want to agree with u but my intelect says it need not be. What i believe is salesmen are for sales they donot have the 
macro persp be preective, their insights may be based on competetor activities or response of the customer i mean to say they may be prejudices sometimes, what i feel is sales organaisation should be like ARMY u know "yours is not to question why but to do and die". having said that i think leader should be able to filter the prejudices and positive feed backs.

Good One. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks Alka for sharing this beautiful piece. while sales people are accepted to be optimistic, they are hardly encouraged to contribute to framing strategies. instead they are stereotyped as demanding.  

Nice insight, keep writing to increase our knowledge.
thanks for sharing

An excellent insight! Most times it is the sales managers themselves who refuse to listen to the sales people who are in touch with reality on the field. this happens due to a myopic outlook in believing that people on the field have little analytical capabilities and such feedback is taken to be an excuse for lowered performance.
It is essential for any organisation to be listening to their salespersons because these are the people who are in touch with the consumer. 

Thanks for sharing we should listen to our salespeople so that the need of the public can be understand and we can come up with new idea.

Sales cult/tribe to take note pls...

Thanks for sharing.