Problem: One of the biggest challenges that salespeople face is getting appointments. People are constantly bombarded by marketing messages via the media enticing them to purchase. Prospects receive daily calls from salespeople who want to see them, so it’s no wonder that they treat most requests for meetings with skepticism and suspicion. This unfortunate fact of life makes the salesperson’s job that much more difficult.
Problem: I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard this from our clients, “If I just had more time, I’d be able to sell more.” In fact, time management and follow-up skills are frequently cited as major challenges sales managers tell us their salespeople face.
Yet we find that salespeople often sabotage themselves when it comes to management of their time. Salespeople are notorious for trying to keep a “prospect” alive when it’s obvious that the “deal” is dead. They continue to try to “resurrect the dead.”
Problem: A large majority of salespeople struggle to get in front of enough prospects to keep their pipeline full. As a result, they feel desperate, have a difficult time dealing with rejection, and often avoid asking the tough questions to find out if they really should be spending their time with someone. This leads to a long selling cycle, inefficient time management, and ultimately, failure.
Problem: What salesperson gets an adequate supply of referrals? Most don’t. For most, getting good referrals is a matter of chance, not choice. And yet, referrals are the best source of new business. Without referrals, salespeople are dependent on other prospecting sources such as cold calling, and cold calling is the least productive of new business development efforts.
Problem: Jenny came to sales training class one morning and asked the class to assess what had gone wrong on a sales call that she had made the week before. She was frustrated that she had spent 45 minutes on one call with no results. She explained the call in detail and after a short, but very focused Q & A, it was determined that the “suspect” she had spent her time with was not a good prospect after all. Jenny reluctantly agreed, but said that this happened more than she liked, and lamented that “some prospecting calls are just a waste of time.” With that admission, she received much sympathy from some class members who agreed with her perspective on prospecting. Jenny admitted that her prospecting activity had declined in recent months and that she was no longer the leading salesperson in her region.
Problem: Sara was becoming increasingly frustrated in her efforts to reach the decision makers when she was prospecting. Time after time access was blocked by the gatekeepers and information gatherers. It often seemed like there was a conspiracy to keep her from speaking to the top-level people. She had tried various tactics, but nothing was working. Now her sales were suffering.
Problem: The following frustration was shared with me by a salesperson the other day. “I reached out to 57 potential prospects this week and only 8 of them gave me the time I needed to tell them what I do. The rest of them said they were busy and didn’t have time to talk. I have been taught that prospects are concerned that salespeople will take up too much of their time so I always ask if they have a few minutes to talk. What do I have to do to earn a minute of time?”
Problem: The holidays are a curious time of year for salespeople. They tell us that after the Thanksgiving holiday something strange starts happening. It seems as though they’re not able to contact as many prospects, make as many appointments, or close as many sales. If you sat in a room full of salespeople discussing the matter, you might get the impression that Santa Claus was public enemy number one!
Problem: “What am I doing here?” Robert said to himself. He was twenty minutes into the initial meeting with this prospect, and he was clearly fighting an uphill battle. All his attempts to develop rapport were met with apathetic, almost frigid responses. His questions, simple and innocuous though they were, received little more than one or two word responses. “What’s going on here?” he wondered. This guy won’t even crack a smile and yet he gave me the appointment. Is he just having a bad day, or do I have a hygiene problem? He just couldn’t figure it out, yet he kept at it, trying to pump some life into this dying appointment. He wanted to quit, but his ego wouldn’t let him; he felt he should be able to breathe some life into this situation.
Problem: It was a gloomy day and had just started to rain when Rick left his second lousy appointment of the day. “Man,” he thought to himself, “it’s pouring down rain, my car is at the other end of the parking lot, and this appointment that I drove 40 miles to see was a total waste of time. My grandmother is a better prospect than this guy.” He put his head down and dejectedly trudged through the rain towards his car. On his way back to the office, he reflected on the appointments he had been on recently. The majority of them had been similar to these two, a waste of time for the most part… nobody seemed interested in buying. He was starting to feel like they were all bad prospects. The gloomy day mirrored his mood perfectly. He needed to do something quickly since his sales were starting to suffer.