The Biggest Sales Problems You Don’t Know You Have
No matter what type of business you’re in, one thing is true — you are in the sales business. If you have a product, service, or idea you need other people to buy, join, or embrace, you have to make a conversion. You have to make a sale.
You can’t afford to have sales problems that hold your business back from bringing prospects to and through your pipeline. Unfortunately, many businesses have issues with sales. Even worse, they have sales problems they aren’t even aware of.
The biggest problem with sales is that most businesses don’t know they have them. So, let’s look at some of these common problems and talk about how your business can overcome these obstacles.
You think you know sales, but you don’t.
It’s easy to see why so many businesses fall into this trap. You have a great product or service. You know your industry, customers, and how to operate a business, so you assume that you also know how to sell what your brand offers. Sales is a part of every business — not every business person has sales skills.
Yes, a good business person can make sales, but they won’t be able to make as many sales as a person who has both the extensive training and tools to make closing deals their number one priority.
Sales requires a unique skill set and knowledge base that many business owners simply don’t have. So if you think because you know business, you know sales — you could be falling into a cycle of other, even bigger sales problems.
You aren’t making enough calls.
If you’re picking up the phone and making sales calls throughout the day, it can feel like you’re doing your job — and somewhat excelling at it, but many sales teams think they are making enough connections when they aren’t.
Most salespeople make about 20 calls per day and on average, make 7 touches to a lead before moving on.
qualifedMEETINGS salespeople make no less than 150 targeted calls per day, driving more conversations and ultimately, more opportunities to sell.
Many businesses guess at how many calls they need to make. An unskilled or under-trained sales team often bases their number of calls on gut feelings or arbitrary numbers instead of data. Our trained sales development representatives focus on high-velocity sales because our data and training tell us that’s what we need to accelerate qualified pipeline and not just wait for unpredictable inbound leads.
You aren’t making “intelligent” calls.
Even if you are making more calls than the average salesperson, you could still be falling into a big sales problem — making uninformed calls. Many sales teams focus only on the number of calls they make per day (even if they still make too few calls). Volume is important and essential to a strong sales plan. But, you need to do more than make a lot of calls; you need to make informed and intelligent calls.
Our strategy at qualifiedMEETINGS is “high-velocity with intelligence.”
High volume using intelligent tools, driving efficiency and getting your sales team in a daily rhythm (high velocity)
Training each sales person by vertical and persona, then segmenting the database based on those factors as well as lead sources to cut down the research and drive relevant conversations that lead to opportunities (intelligence)
Before we make any call, we come up with a plan that increases our chance at making a meaningful connection with that specific prospect. We don’t just spend our time cold-calling generic leads. We place every call based on a specific cadence, talking points, use cases, and stories developed using personas and relevant data.
You don’t use personas.
A persona is a thorough description of a prospect. It outlines details about their demographics and role at work so a sales team can get a good picture of a lead before they call them. Many sales teams skip this process. They assume they know enough about their prospect and jump ahead and make the call. This strategy (or lack of strategy) limits their ability to connect with the prospect and move the lead forward.
At qualitifiedMEETINGS, personas are at the core of our sales process. We spend a lot of time developing a variety of personas so when our SDRs reach out to prospects, they already feel like they know them. This strategy makes it easier for our team to quickly connect with the caller because they know the prospect’s needs, challenges, and pain points before asking the first question.
You aren’t using data.
The other intelligence that many sales teams overlook is data. Lots of sales team get caught up in routine. They make sale calls that are unsuccessful and a few that are successful, but they never track the data that helps them see what could have led to an achievement over a failure.
We are constantly tracking and analyzing data to improve our sales process. In fact, we’ve been tracking and analyzing data for years which is why our current sales process is so effective. For each prospect, we track the:
Time-of-day of interactions
Prospect’s role within the business
Time between follow-ups
Number of interactions it took to convert
And other proprietary data points
We use all of this data to make sure every call we place is directed by intelligence that will produce the best possible outcomes.
You’re only making sales calls.
When we imagine inside sales, we typically envision a team sitting at desks making calls all day. But, sales has moved way beyond phone calls. Sales are no longer made by talking on the phone or taking a prospect to lunch. As you nurture leads, you must use both in-person and digital touchpoints.
We call this “digital sales.” It’s a hybrid approach that uses traditional outbound phone calls along with digital touches such as video calls, LinkedIn connections, and email. We’ve combined what works on the phone and in-person with essential online connections to make a mixed media strategy that converts more prospects than traditional sales tactics.
You don’t have a process.
Finally, one of the most detrimental problems that a sales team has is lacking a process for success. Many sales teams keep plugging away, going through the same motions, despite their results or return on the investment.
At qualifiedMEETINGS, we don’t leave anything to chance. We used our data, personas, and years of experience to develop a specific sales process that outlines exactly what needs to happen during the sales process. We’re proven a process over 1 million touches that includes:
21 touches for inbound leads
38 touches for outbound leads
Our strategy isn’t based on a hunch or good luck. It’s based on quantifiable data and proven results. We’ve created a proprietary process that we know always leads to the best results and highest ROI.
Solve your sales problems with qualifiedMEETINGS.
The biggest sales problem is not realizing that you have sale problems. We hope this article has helped you identify some gaps in your strategy so you can tighten up your process to make more sales and improve your overall ROI.
If you’d like more guidance or assistance with bringing our unique sales process and strategy to your business, contact us today. We have a variety of partnerships — from outsourced sales services and custom program development to consulting and sales recruiting — that can bring our knowledge and expertise to your team.