Navigating the terrain of the sales process can be challenging. From getting leads, qualifying, proposals to closing, the sales process can come with a few twists and turns. This is especially turn now because of the need to adapt to new ways to hire sales professionals, the integration of social media, more robust CRMs. In addition, audiences now don’t always make purchases in the same way.
To get a better understanding of what sales professionals face, we reached out to local leaders and clients and asked: What are your biggest sales challenges (and how do you overcome them)?
Here’s what they had to say:
Noise: Prospects are bombarded with so many emails, meetings and work. Cold calling and prospecting is becoming harder.
– Paul St. Onge, Managing Director at hjc, @paulstonge
What is the biggest challenge for a modern sales professional and how do you overcome it? Noise: Prospects are bombarded with so many emails, meetings and work. Cold calling and prospecting is becoming harder.
– Tibor Shanto, Principle at Renbor Sales Solutions Inc, @TiborShanto
The biggest challenge for the modern sales professional today is having a deep understanding for the how the buying environment has changed. Buyers are no longer waiting to be sold to, they are looking for trusted advisors to help solve business problems. The best way for sales people get better and overcome this is to:
a) understand your value proposition, and I don’t mean from a marketing slide deck, understand it from your existing customer.
b) understand your buyer, their business goals and the obstacles/pain from getting to those goals. This can be done through insightful and provocative discovery questions.
c) lead TO your solution, not WITH your solution. Sales professionals will naturally get into “pitch” mode. Once you’ve done a&b above, your pitch can be far most customized and compelling for your prospect.
– David Bloom, CEO & Founder of Lurniture, @sdavidbloom
From working in numerous positions throughout my career including a bank teller, Director of Sales and now a CEO I’ve learned that the biggest hindrance to sales success is this:
Time Management
In his book The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, author Mark Roberge did a deep analysis on the success of his newly-hired sales professionals at Hubspot. Predictably, important sales skills such as negotiation and relationship management were the initial items that these sales professionals gravitated towards. But one of the less predictable factors that were critical to success of a salesperson was “The ability of sales professionals to manage their schedules and focus in on the core tasks that drive revenue.” One statistic says that the average sales professional only spends 25% of their work day (2 hours) actually conducting real selling activities. The rest of their time is spent on administrative and non-essential tasks. This is staggering! I learned this the hard way.
To combat this, I use two main time management philosophies:
- Getting Things Done (written by David Allen)
This book taught me to segment everything into categories: what needs to be accomplished today, pending tasks, and projects to get done. This allows me to only focus in on next immediate task by taking all my ideas.
- Franklin Covey Rock System
At Sales for Life, we follow the Franklin Covey rock system. In fact, everyone in the company has three critical milestones—or rocks—that they need to accomplish in 90 days. In short, everything you need to do must correspond to those rocks. Everything else is a distraction.
This mix of David Allen’s getting things done and the Franklin Covey rock system has allowed me to focus my day on what needs to be done to make money now. Everything else is a huge distraction.
– Jamie Shanks, CEO at Sales for Life, @jamietshanks
It is harder to connect with prospects as they are starting to make their decisions. End users today are researching information on their own and reaching out to companies or sales people. The key is getting to the decision makers earlier in the sales cycle. Tradition sales tactics like cold calling and trade shows are decreasing in value. Newer strategies like social selling and driving inbound leads through content marketing are now more valuable tools for the average sales team.
– Mark Elliott, Co-owner of Venture Accelerator Partners, @markeelliott
Yes, sales can sometimes be challenging, but that’s also what makes it so exciting. What sales challenges do you face? Let us know in the comments below.
If you haven’t read our previous post of this series, check it out here: Biggest Challenge for Digital Marketers.
