Sales Lead: Tuff in present economic slow down

Each and Every organization may need to conduct their own Great "sales" Crusade of sorts. With the economy crises, high unemployment, and consumers cautious about their financial future, sales are definitely harder to come by these days. And with sales down, bottom-line revenues are suffering causing the operating budgets of many businesses to be stretched dangerously thin.

All this adds up to an enormous amount of pressure being placed upon sales teams to produce. More specifically, the weight of this responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of the sales manager, whom is ultimately charged with leading their team north of sales targets irrespective of the challenging market conditions.

Take a minute and think that our legendary hero King Arthur faced a similar crisis in his kingdom. Say, something along the lines of... the treasury was running dangerously low, an unusually large number of peasants and serfs couldn't find a field to work, and Merlin's confidence in his magic was shaken from the resulting unrest spreading throughout the kingdom. How would the beloved king of English lore have handled this situation? Would he have withdrawn to his royal chambers and attempted to single-handedly solve all the problems of the realm?

Under pressure to meet sales targets, instinctively, average sales managers often withdraw to their office, close the door, and attempt to formulate the master "sales survival strategy" by drawing on their personal experience, a very anti-Arthurian thing to do (dangerously limiting the probability of mapping out a successful strategy, thus increasing the odds of their own personal turn on the spit in the future!). Instead, they should take a page out of King Arthur's leadership book and invite their sales team members to participate in a roundtable session.