Every year sales organization spend millions into new ways to grow sales. Business owners know that sales are the lifeblood of the company, or do they? If you can’t produce new business, there is no company, or at least no future for that company!
A recent study of 2,663 sales organizations by Think Training, Nightingale Conant, and Trainique uncovered five areas that differentiate successful sales organizations from the rest.
Business Growth Issue One
A Wing-It mentality towards selling. 82% of all business owners said their company had a sales process that wasn’t defined, wasn’t being followed or no sales process at all.
Business Growth Issue Two
Lack of sales knowledge and lack of application. 42% of business owners and CEO’s stated their salespeople lacked the essential basic skills needed to produce at a rate consistent with real growth.
Regardless of sales experience remember the following. You cannot put a man in a cave, leave him there for twenty years and have him walk out with a geology degree!
Business Growth Issue Three
Failing to adhere to a consistent sales routine. Sales teams today lack performance standards that are conducive with growth. 90% of CEO’s said their salespeople focused on low payoff activities, called on the wrong people or consistently called on the same low revenue customers. In other words, salespeople confuse activity with productivity.
Business Growth Issue Four
Allowing “Self Limiting Beliefs” to sabotage your efforts. 86% of business owners and CEO’s said their salespeople had bad attitudes rooted in negative thinking or self-limiting beliefs that seriously impede their sales efforts.
Business Growth Issue Five
Ownership does not develop their people – training, untraining and targeted coaching to remove sales obstacles and, self-limiting beliefs are virtually non-existent. Business owners said their sales managers were not spending enough time coaching their salespeople.
Business owners spend much of their time second-guessing
Business owners spend much of their time second-guessing what they could have done. For example, salespeople you hire, yet do not produce, positive attitudes that convert into excuses surface, followed by an environment of complacency that creates turnover. Salespeople sit back after all the hours of pitching, presenting, chasing and reflecting why the prospect did not buy. The reasons that come to the surface are at the very least, predictable.
- Your price is too high!
- We need to “Think about it”!
- We have decided to back burner this project for now!
- We have decided to stay with our current vendor!
The question is why are these reasons consistent, and why is it that we consistently determine these reasons only after it is too late? Time spent reading emails, responding to voicemails, writing proposals, pitching to non-decision makers and not holding prospects accountable is not time spent selling. It is time spent chasing! What percentage of the overall time on the job is spent eye to eye, belly to belly, selling with new qualified prospects? How much time conversely is spent chasing existing customers who translate into little more than a trickle of residual income? Why does this dilemma plague sales organizations? Understand that it is you and the management team who develops the environment, or allows this to take place.
Your Lowest Level Of Acceptance
Your lowest level of acceptance for poor performance is the highest level of performance you can expect. A better question is what is this costing you? For example, if you reduced by half the amount of time your salespeople spend chasing procrastinators and doubled your actual time spent selling what would this translate into with regards to gross sales?
Time Investment | Does it Pay Off?
Look at the time spent prospecting, presenting, writing proposals followed by chasing the prospect and compare that with your real ROI. Did you find that you were on a fishing expedition? You will realize the importance of addressing this matter sooner rather than later. If your stock portfolio was only performing at 50% of its potential, would you keep dumping money into these underperforming stocks? No!
To step outside of the box, access what you have and determine how much room for improvement or untapped potential is there for your existing salespeople. Hoping your team will change is not an option.
