If your salespeople are complaining about clients, this is a serious symptom of a larger problem: the negative conversations are being reciprocated on the client side.
If this is the case, I encourage you to have a real and candid conversation with key people involved immediately. The first question should be, ‘what and how are we not meeting our client’s expectations?” The response, if honest, will provide valuable insight into the client’s real issues and values to allow you to address them and move forward together. I would also encourage having the same conversations with key clients to establish what’s really important to them.
You must demonstrate you genuinely care about your clients and their best interests. Unhappy clients are like fruit, if you leave them on the vine without care for too-long they rot and fall-off. Instead, identify why these team members feel the need to engage in disrespectful conversations regarding clients. Often a manager receives a deceptive or biased interpretation of the client problem. This is designed to protect the salesperson or account manager’s reputation. In serious cases, I recommend going direct to the client as a more effective course, but in a way that doesn’t disempowered the salesperson and promote an internal dissonance to the client.
One of the most frequent areas that I get asked to consult on is sales team ‘performance’, or lack thereof…
When you get a bunch of ‘Type A’ personalities together who are driven and outcome focused, two types of team states commonly form: ‘Fabricated Harmony’ or ‘Genuine Conflict’.