Jul 11, 20218:11 PM - edited Aug 12, 202110:50 AM
HubSpot Employee
What's keeping your reps from selling?
Companies hire salespeople to sell, but then a host of competing demands and unhelpful systems almost always get in the way. Have a suggestion for how to remove distractions and focus on selling? Share it in the comments below!
Sales people w/o a good understanding of the proccess to get new leads, etc. does not help them, and it is also imperative in todays enviroment to automate the proccess in full with a good CRM; so they do not have to spend time in doing manual work.
Sales representatives should thoroughly research to understand the needs of potential customers. It's crucial to assess whether the customer would benefit from our product or service and if it adds value to their operations.
Here is the bottom $ bare bones of Sales, if you have a good product good support and good user experience from top to bottom, the sales team acts as big deal contract closers and
Convenient ease of use facilitators involving education and utlization. Customers shine you shine marketing budget decreases need sales increase volume of sales increase thus bigger paychecks for everyone involved. Instead of you half cooked half thought of ideas that somehow made it to production and then salesmen were ask to push subpar products onto the public for a premium and told it is how every system works instead of listening to the customers and doing enough product research to make a good product that is constantly improving. If you as a leader don't have buy in on your company and products and encourage your sales people or at least the managers to work side by side with the engineers, the customer service, the finance team, R&D, and don't have trust meaning if you are constantly telling your employees one thing and doing another like spagetti thrown on the wall to see what sticks policies or the things are tight this year so promised bonuses even though all sales goals were greatly exceeded you are only getting a ham for xmas or a quarter what was promised while seeing upper mangagment get record bonuses for the company and industry. Get the picture.
If you have subpar products meaning no design flaws no better product out there, and you want strong sales no matter how you sugar coat the sales approach as Needs based sales, SaaS, client centric, needs discovery, solution based, etc.... If you are not recommending your competitors products instead of your own when you they have a better product then that is a lie and keeps the status quo of not forcing the engineers or design teams to make a good product. Innovation will flurish when the boots on the ground salesmen actually focused on providing great solutions meaning they have buyin and you are paying them and honest with the profit sharing so they are constantly talking to the design teams and customers helping them make money that helps you make money. Basically as @DBaker00 stated Consultatory Sales are better and if the company actuals backs their product and company belief in consultatory sales is throughout, instead of the sales person having to spend their own non-paid time to be a good salesmen to the customer's needs/solutions and consult instead of meeting whatever super important metric is that week when last week it was the exact opposite so that you retain a "good salesmen" office politics wise. Why do you think customers will leave with a salesmen? Its not because he retained a book of business on the side when he finally has enough of your company, its because he had to work two jobs to actually meet the needs instead of moving onto the new sale and letting Sales support specialist. Some of my biggest long term deals and highest profits for the company was when I flat out denied the customer the product after identifying the need and held a big deal hostage to get an easy improvement done that should be part of the base product long ago as our sales team requested with me being the biggest proponent. Product desgin change was done within an hour with change cost of less than $100 for time especially when I laid out the intent to purchase letter with immediate revenue and projected long term revenue contract after the 90 day intial period with a clause that kept my company honest. When the CEO perosnally invites you on a heads of business outting and thanks you for protecting his company and product against internal and external threats that causes company wide improvements. I still am a consultant for that company and I still get phone calls from his staff thanking me and a few clients as well.
Conclusion: good management, honest company, good products, good employees, no silent hiring, universal willingness to improve the products, work life balance, and innovate. Outside of that, your salesmen are peddling malware or sub-qualtiy products as if they are trying to sale ice in Antarctica to whatever penguin will buy it or if its decently bad situation just a snake oil salesmen promising the fountain of youth and causing an empty purse.
Pushy sales vs. consultatory sales. Hopefully we're all practicing consultative sales practices now, but this can slow down the process as the buyer now is equipped with more information than ever before
I have never managed any sales department or salesperson, but what I take from this video is that The sales process is getting longer as buyers take more time to evaluate their options, consider recommendations from competitors, and involve more decision-makers at different levels. This leads to more negotiations and tighter budgets as companies carefully manage to spend on strategic projects, and salespeople spend a significant amount of time on tasks such as drafting proposals, preparing for sales calls, and obtaining quote approvals.
Good question. Worth a discussion as a sales team, but hopefully that's not just one more set of complaints that doesn't lead to a solution.
We made a decision within the past 18 months to think of customer service in terms of both internal and external customers. As it turns out, the sales team has been among the last in the process of that consideration - and it shows.
Sales spends a lot of time dealing with multiple databases (3 enterprise systems, for starters) and some confusing messages about territory, lead distribution, lead generation, and relationship management. Customer service has access to a service system that includes automation and tasks, but sales is not integrated into that customer service system.
Sales spends a lot of time on the road but there are no phone-based apps that allow salespeople to access their leads, customers, or contacts. Contacts might be kept on a personal cell phone or in the main CRM (only accessible via multi-step log-in to a secure portal, which takes about 5 minutes to access from a computer and is almost impossible to access by phone), but there is no single repository for these contacts or for the team to look at a dashboard.
Different for every case, company, product, or service. However, I have noticed some things that I would love to share:
inefficient onboarding/training. Lack of product/service knowledge, market trends, industry norms, and an established sales system leads to a lackluster approach and diminished output over time.
inefficient tooling. Utilizing multiple systems that don't integrate or communicate with each other. Leading to longer times doing administrative tasks and frustration on the reps' side.
CONTROVERSIAL, removing the sales team's role in customer success and account management. Some reps relish the idea of only being tasked with selling their respective product/service. Others miss the opportunity to truly understand the pain points, and implementation strategies, as well as share 'successes' with accounts they've already closed the book on and transitioned to other team members.
Cold Call, Cold Call, Cold Call: A lot of organizations are focused on cold outreach instead of promoting organic growth by investing in their product or service to better address the needs of their customers and prospects. With stale products/services; salespeople are stuck crafting methodologies for when they're most likely to get time to speak with a receptive party. It becomes a numbers game as you're constantly faced with the need to feed the 'funnel'.
One of the specific challenges that I have from selling is customers wanting the cheapest price, but not taking the ordered product. Picture this, you, as a salesperson, offer your customer different pricing levels (ex. you can get 1,000 parts for $1,000 or you can get 2,000 parts for $750). When you provide offers like these, the customer will want the best deal possible, so they'll go for the "2,000 parts for $750" option. However, their internal demand is only for 1,000 parts. The customer will schedule a firm release date for the first 1,000 pcs, but procrastinate in taking the remaining 1,000.
This can be a distraction, as time/effort goes into going back & forth with the customer to take their balance. We try to remove these distractions by setting alerts that warn against accepting orders above a certain quantity. This way, the seller can focus on getting the buyer what they actually need and can look to sell to other customers. There are also internal policies that the customer must take the ordered quantity within a year of the order being placed. If not, we send them the parts at the end of the year.
Here are some suggestions without knowing all the factors:
Possibly: Extend out the price model based on quantity and years of relations as well as ease of dealing (internal metric). Too many companies reward new business and walk all over the old business.
Here is an example to the same calibur that might hurt: you worked for this company for 5 years, but the new hire gets paid more and produces 1/10th of what you do with less credentials and experience and your boss said it was inflation that there wasn't any money for you. BTW you have to train them in addition to doing your increased sales goals and Jim and Sally's job since Sally got let go for asking for a raise even though she did double your coworkers work and Jim is on vacation since he decided to get married with a years notice. Oh and that request for more teammates to help balance your work life load is denied since we moved your half your team over a new product so Dan doent have to do any work. If you might think this isn't real life, I have very happy that you haven't experience what so many others have experienced at badly managed companies.
Is the price the biggest factor or warehouse space and handling? Did you ask the client to be honest about the most important factors. The longer something is in a active warehouse or production facility the more risk of damage or shelf life factors that the customer can't easily replace but the manufacturer can if you are a greedy middle man you shouldn't be there anyways that drives up inflation and product costs for everyone include that dinner you just had last night. Otherwise, fork lift ran over or pipe burst, the manufacture can replace at cost and overall has insurance for shrinkage over a certain amount.
If they want the better price and shipping is calculated into the prices then more shipments have shipping fees. Ask them what the buyer needs to show on paper as the most important factors to thier specific tax or management requested metric is.
Here is the bottom line: the customer knows you are making a profit even at 10000 units for $250ea and if shipping is priced in then seller gets a shipping discount if its a full trailer load or part of another route depending on location etc. So if you are still making 20% over the dummy built in 20-50% internal purhcase listed cost thats already 70% minus operating costs. From a fellow salesman and someone who has worked for manufacturers, how much profit do you need or is considered thriving? There is a line between extortion and making a profit just to state the obvious. If your own company doesn't trust you enough to know the real cost of the product that you are selling then why should the customer trust you? If the customer paid for shipping and handling including increased burden of seller, would you be ok making the lets say 50% revenue at $250ea price structure assuming that 10-20% that is the dummy increase if not the first 20% is the set operating costs that still leaves you with 30% or more?
Did you ask them if its a matter of cash flow or operating budgets?
Financially speaking material costs and shipping cost can be in two different financial categories for the customer? Material cost might be a balance sheet item that they have to control for whatever reason even if it cost more in the long run to have multiple shipments that shipping costs don't get fully calculated in the metrics that upper managment focuses on. I have literally had manhy situations where I had to ask the client what they would like to pay for it and what line items I could make up the difference on. If you do not have that power to adjust that then your company doesn't trust you and niether should your client trust you or your company.
Have you tried clawback clauses that protects the client buyer employee and the selling company as well as your commissions? This way where the person doing sale projections of the client that gets paid the big bucks actually holds responsiblity where the main part of the reward is aka good leadership. This is especially useful if budget or tax purposes that year for the company has excess profits that if not spent would get reallocated or taxed in a way profit would go down.
Your year policy is good to keep the back log moving, but I feel like that is a bandaid and burdensome for everyone involved. Imagine going to a all inclusive that some are upcharged or have conditions and a vast amount of options you can't memorize all of it. Imagine the food is color coded and 1000's of items, but do many people actually know the difference between the 100 different shades of blue like baby blue, cloudy blue, and calming breezey blue that is by each food item or whatever is associated with in thier CRM.
A GOOD CRM with a good company structure and support is highly recommended
Try walking into your customer's office with a handshake and a promise that you are not going to take advantage of them with your company's blessing, that you will make enough profit to stay in business and thrive, that you don't want them to front the bill for any mismanagement on your side that this is a partnership that you are purposing and the most you will ask for if there is a blunder on either side that we approach it with a fair and solution minded oreintation. Your client will never leave as long as the respect and honesty statys even if you are for a limited time 20-30% above the cost of the competitors as long as you stick to your word and agreement the best you can. These type partnerships go from slightly parasitic to cohabitation or mutual benefits. One year you work for joe somebody paper company providing just printer paper as the relationship grows the business grows now you are supplying every subdidary of the parent company of your client and supply half of their total materials.
If you don't have the leeway to make any of these things a reality at your company you might be at the wrong company and the customer is right to try to decrease thier profit to the parasitic entity that is a generic supplier/distributor. Also you or your boss can't be thinking of which brand new sport fishing boat, the 30ft or 40ft, to buy while pretending to be needs based or solution based concern selling. Yes the general public is attracted to flashy thinking that is success, but the business minded people know some of the flashiest people are the most broke and has many other possible indicators including that they might have obviously been paying too much.
Sorry if that was too long of a response. Too many people I have worked with, for, and consulted with deal with these same type issues when the whole time it is management to the core that almost always holds back the company and the sales team. I am hoping this type thinking will eventually get back to the main stream instead of just in the internals of the super successful businesses.
“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”Margaret J. Wheatley
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