Colleen’s Blog

It's frustrating. When you see a sales rep struggling month after month, and missing target after target, it's enough to make any sales leader uneasy. The problem is most leaders handle poor performers the wrong way. There's a tendency to have "tough conversations" or attempt to punish them into higher performance. Some leaders even give poor performers the "cold shoulder" and allow a rep's professional performance to seep into their personal behavior towards them. These are all things that are extremely counterproductive and more often than not, contribute to more negativity and even worse performance. Luckily, there are strategies you can put into place to help improve their results. 

Is your market slowing down? Be sure not to get caught up in a “slow down” mindset! While most salespeople will complain about the market, the successful salespeople will be looking for ways to turn a negative situation into a positive one. The majority of salespeople fail to realize that a market slowing down is actually the perfect opportunity to revise sales strategies and increase sales activity. Think about it, the slower market does not just create problems for you, your competition is likely struggling as well. Chances are they're facing the same challenges your sales team is facing, so it’s important to capitalize on this opportunity. By switching yourself from a  “slow down” mindset to a “speed up” one, you are essentially taking the first step towards achieving prosperity in difficult markets.

How long do you typically take to get back to a prospect upon receiving an inquiry from them? Anything longer than 24 hours is too long. Your customers are busy people - by taking too long to respond you’re letting go of an otherwise potentially easy sale. ← Click To Tweet The number of salespeople and organizations who let days or weeks pass before responding to an inquiry is absolutely staggering. This type of behavior not only breaks several rules in sales etiquette but also displays a complete lack of professional etiquette as well. If you're looking for the easiest, most foolproof way of losing a sale, just trick yourself into believing that your potential customer will be at your beck and call and ready to buy whenever you feel the urge to reply to them. For example: I once sent an inquiry to a company about buying a tradeshow booth. I expressed a strong interest in their product and indicated that I simply needed a few pieces of information before making a purchase. I expected a prompt reply due to my clear readiness to buy their product.

Your sales process could be out of date or prone to more errors than you think. Recently, I worked with a sales VP who was looking to retool their entire sales process. He works with two sales managers who have been in their respective positions for a number of years. Due to this, their process has become more or less automatic. I helped them conduct an end to end sales process review, and here's what we discovered:

What's the easiest way to lose control of the sales process? I'm sure you've noticed, many salespeople hold off on presenting their price to a prospective client until the final written proposal. They don’t bring up pricing in person or before a written proposal is sent because they’re afraid to scare away their potential client. Ironically, by following this methodology, they end up scaring away the prospect anyway. If you avoid discussing pricing options until the very last moment, you make it too easy for the prospect to ignore you. They may love everything about you and what you have to offer, but if the amount they see in writing is not something they’re comfortable with, chances are they will simply avoid discussion rather than initiating it and trying to come to a solution. In their mind, it’s much easier to ignore you than to reach out to you for a chance at a better price. Your buyer fears rejection too! When this scenario unfolds, you lose complete control over the sales process and you make it very difficult for yourself to recover from it.