You peruse the reports. You lean back in your chair, kick your legs out in front of you, scratch your head and rub your chin. Then you throw your hands in the air and ask an age-old question:
"Why aren't we getting solid sales outcomes?"
Too often this becomes a rhetorical question. Some members of your team stare at the ground. Others stare into the distance as if they're pondering something to say, a solution. Others just shake their heads.
Answers seem as elusive as the goals you've set for your team.
Maybe it's the economy. Maybe it's a people problem. Maybe it's marketing; you don't have the correct collateral materials.
But the truth of the matter is this – it's probably your sales process.
If you aren't seeing the solid sales outcomes needed to reach your goals, take a look at your sales process and see if your team is making these common missteps.
- It's all about the buck
Ah, the almighty dollar. At the end of the day, it's what drives most businesses and their sales professionals. But it's also one of the most common reasons a sales process breaks down. It could be considered the dirty little secret of the sales industry, but it's true: salespeople who simply want to make a buck are not as successful as those who focus on offering solid solutions to their customers' most common problems.
The solution? Equip your sales team with a deeper understanding of how focusing on the needs of the customer and providing them with a viable solution creates a win for both them and the customer! - It's not customized for each customer
People approach problems and process information differently. This is a well-documented fact. Some are analytical. Others are experimental. Then there are those who are practical and others who are relational. The information that your sales team presents is naturally going to be filtered through the way each of your customers hears it. If your sales process doesn't take this variation into account, you're probably not going to see the solid sales outcomes you desire.
Instead, your sales people should learn how to decipher the frame of reference that each customer is coming from, and present the information in that preferred manner.
The same principle applies for how you should train your sales team. Be aware that when you make the necessary adjustments to your sales process, you communicate the new expectations in a way that each individual can fully grasp and understand. - It's focused on solving the wrong problems
Albert Einstein is famously quoted as saying that if he were given one hour to save the planet, he would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it. Smart guy, that Einstein.
"Solution sales" has been popular for years, and your team probably already knows to sell solutions rather than products or services. But according to studies published in the Harvard Business Review, this might be putting your team at a distinct disadvantage. Companies are now better than ever at identifying their problems, so they look for products or services that simply solve them at the best price and with the smallest amount of effort from their organizations.
The most successful salespeople, however, have worked to know so much about their prospects that they are able to identify problems (even as an outsider looking in) that even the companies don't realize they have.
This likely means pursuing customers that you haven't previously gone after -- companies that are less established but more agile. It might also involve investing time into educating your existing customers on how to add into their budget buying the products or services that will solve these newly identified problems.
The Answer to the Age-Old Question
The next time you're sitting at your desk, looking over the numbers, make sure you also take a look at your sales process. Check to make sure it's designed to motivate your team to focus on the customer, customize their approaches, and be creative problem solvers for prospects they maybe didn't know existed.
