How Smart (or Dumb) is Your Manager?

As I suspected it might, my post "Sales Management's 10 Dumbest Mistakes" flushed out some great "real-life" mistakes that I somehow missed. Here they are, credited to the perceptive community member who posted them:

1. Agreeing to (or even worse, asking to) become a sales manager with absolutely no experience, management skills, or the temperament, even though you were the best sales rep in the world. (Dave Stein)
2. Punishing the most successful salespeople by cutting their compensation or territories. (Herb Moses)
3. Setting quotas so far out of reach the whole team fails and loses confidence. (Aimee333)
4. Agreeing to pay percents for quotas that NEVER are followed through on, thus losing the best sales people (Aimee333)
5. Setting quota strictly on previous quarter or years performance with no correlation between territory and product cycle. (renovicelli)
6. Always expecting growth in a contracting market. (renovicelli)
7. Not paying a percentage of sales from the first dollar that the rep brings in. (renovicelli)
8. Forcing sales reps to pay out-of-pocket for expenses up front and then reimbursing [only] after the expense report has been created/reviewed/accepted. (CariG57)
9. Forcing employees to work in an area where they don't have any interest. (Verinon)
10. Worrying about bitchy complaints in blogs like The Sales Machine. (alphadogg)

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