28 Ways to Cripple Your Sales Team

Are your salespeople too efficient? Is their closing rate too high? Are they bringing in more business than you can handle?

It’s a common problem. I see it all the time in my work as a speaker and trainer. I feel your pain.

Fortunately, there are plenty of things you can do to handicap even the best salespeople:

1. Don’t provide them ongoing training
2. Don’t coach them
3. Don’t connect them with mentors
4. Set unrealistic quotas
5. Take away part of their territory
6. Give them too large a territory
7. Change their compensation structure so they earn less
8. Withhold positive feedback
9. Withhold constructive feedback
10. Don’t offer any incentives
11. Refuse them time off to attend seminars
12. Use the cheapest CRM
13. Keep them in the dark about competitors
14. Create contests that pit them against each other
15. Make them fill out as much paperwork as possible
16. Don’t give them support staff
17. Require them to work nights and weekends
18. Criticize them in public
19. Transfer the customers who know them best to someone else
20. Force them to sit through endless meetings
21. Frequently berate and belittle them
22. Sexually harass them
23. Spread rumors about them throughout the organization
24. Ignore their requests, ideas, and suggestions
25. Make them pay for as many of their expenses as possible
26. Don’t give them any public praise or recognition
27. Refuse to take them with you to conferences
28. Go behind their backs and talk with their clients directly (bonus points for offering them a better deal than they got from your salesperson)

Think of all the benefits of an unskilled, under-equipped, demotivated sales team: You won’t have to open new plants or locations, you won’t have to struggle to keep up with increasing customer demand, and you won’t have to hire more people. (Heck, you can even lay off some of your customer service staff and save money!)

So if you’re burdened by too much new—and repeat—business, implement these tactics and you’ll slow that torrent of sales down to a trickle. You can thank me later.