Put any piece of machinery under stress and you’ll find its’ weak spots. The same is true of sales organizations. In times of stress, like today’s tough sales environment, weaknesses become more pronounced – and that’s not all bad. "You can use pressure as an opportunity to find weaknesses in your sales force and then strengthen it," says Tom Atkinson, VP and director of customer research at The Forum Corporation, an organization specializing in workplace learning (www.forum.com).

Still, it’s one thing to know where your team is weak; it’s another to know what should be fixed. Recognizing that a random approach to fixing weak spots is unlikely to yield results, Forum Corp. set out to determine which common areas of weakness, if fixed, are most likely to boost performance. Researchers examined multiple skill sets in each of the four drivers of sales success (management, process, climate, and skills). In each driver, they found three or four significant "pressure points" – areas that separated high and low performing teams. Here’s a look at the findings:

Sales management. Ask executives or reps to rate their sales managers and Atkinson says you’ll find "some pretty scary numbers." Specifically, three-quarters of respondents rated their managers as either not effective (26 percent) or only moderately effective (49 percent). So what do the highest rated managers have that others don’t? Forum found three capabilities that differentiate high and low performers: leading strategically (which accounts a manager calls on, how they meet customer needs, how they spend their time, how they help reps be strategic and focused), coaching (joint sales calls, planning meetings, and being a thinking partner with a rep), and motivating (keeping reps charged up and energized). When managers are skilled in these three capabilities, their reps and bosses rate them as highly effective – and the organization’s performance reflects it.

Sales support systems and processes. Forum looked at seven different areas under this umbrella: recruiting, performance management, opportunity management, strategic account management, reward systems (compensation plans, bonuses, etc.), information systems (SFA, CRM), and training and development systems. Among these, the biggest driver of success was information systems – not necessarily the technology itself but how it is used, whether executives are fully supportive of it, how much time reps must spend entering information, and whether the system truly helps reps sell better or simply helps managers manage better.

Climate. Forum defines climate as what it’s like to work at a place – how well performance is recognized, how motivated and dedicated the people are, how well they work together, and so on. In looking closely at all the aspects of climate, Atkinson says four factors "popped" as being the most significant differentiators between high and low performing sales organizations: clarity (on issues such as the kinds of customers you are going after, what solutions need to be pushed, what you want to achieve), commitment (to what extent are people up for the challenge of selling today?), responsibility (do people follow up on their promises, either with customers or internally?), and recognition (not the formal program as much as the day-to-day informal pats on the back, verbal acknowledgement, and spontaneous gifts). How well you are doing in these four areas has an enormous impact on your overall performance.

Selling Skills. There were three areas that stood out here, says Atkinson: finding new business, winning sales, and keeping customers. "Most people have gotten good at keeping customers," he says, "but in those first two areas you can make a difference." That’s especially true today when new business and closing deals are harder than ever.

The bottom line: every sales organization has its weak points. The challenge sales managers face is in knowing which of their weaknesses deserves attention and which can be left alone without much damage being caused. As The Forum Corporation discovered, the above "pressure points" are the ones with the greatest impact on the performance of your organization.