Why Do Salespeople Fail? – Part Two
In the last post, we took a look at three reasons why salespeople fail. In this post, we’ll look at some more.
Lack of answers: There are some salespeople, especially newbies, who give up at the drop of a hat. They don’t have a proper system to deal with the various vagaries of the job. No lead pipeline? Quit. No one answering their cold calls? Quit. Receptionist refusing to pass the call to the IT manager? Quit. They simply don’t have an answer to the questions that come their way.
This of course fails even before it starts. After all, to borrow and paraphrase a famous line from Pulp Fiction, ‘the path of the salesperson is beset on all sides by the extreme indifference of the gatekeepers and the inherent lethargy in the sales process.’ If they don’t know how to navigate the obstacles, or, in other words, if they don’t have a system to deal with what comes their way, it is a clear recipe for failure.
No sales funnel: This is true especially in the case of B2B sales where the average sales cycle takes around three months. As it is a continuous process, salespeople need to define the steps that they want to put their leads through. Agreed, a sales funnel might not be the most effective way but they need to have at least a step-by-step process which guides the sales cycle.
Lack of leads: Generally, Marketing is responsible for generating leads and Sales is responsible for closing them. If the Marketing team is not up to the mark in this regard, Sales suffers. However, that is not to say that salespeople should depend completely on Marketing for their leads. If there is a dearth of leads, then they should start generating them on their own.
Stuck in a time warp: The world is constantly changing and so are customers and their needs. Where direct sales worked once, indirect selling might be a better option now. Where customers were looking for on-premise applications, they might be looking for on-demand now. Salespeople need to change with the times and adapt and align their pitches and techniques to the product and market needs.
Watch out if you are under threat from any of the reasons mentioned above. To have happy and productive salespeople and a hassle-free sales process, deploy online customer relationship management software.
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