Do Excuses Drive Down Sales?

This article posted in the Rock Hill Herald on April 8, 2010, focuses on salespeople and their performance. The researches examined close to 42,000 salespeople and found that the salespeople who were most inclined to blame under performance on outside influences also scored significantly poorer on the sales test and engaged in significantly less client-building activity. As one researcher quoted "Blaming is how some salespeople cope with the underlying discomfort they experience when prospecting new business." Such complaints by the salespeople that are out of their control may include undersized "natural market," not enough advertising, pricing policy, and product knowledge.

The salespeople are defensive about their inability to perform in certain areas and displace this onto others, such as the company and its policies. This is a defence mechanism that was studied in Chapter 11. Rather than address the underlying issue and accept responsibility when their skills are not what they should be, others are blamed.