What's keeping your reps from selling?

[KyleJepson]

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!

*To learn more about this, check out the Enabling your sales team to spend more time selling lesson via HubSpot Academy. 

[JVanderlei]

Structure - Inability to structure.

They should be responsible enough to organize themselves in the most effective way, with the sales process put in place. There are factors well within their control that enable them to be successful. Structure is the make or break in my opinion.

[EddieAgaronian]

Lack of customer personalization, along with not the full information before calling and almost no feedback given

[KANDEL]

The admin tasks are the biggest wasters of time. We attempt to automate as much as possible.

[AMCardona]

We are in the same boat right now and are finally fixing it and creating base copy for our sales reps to use. When I'm creating base copy I always leave personalization sections for the rep to make use of... Like at the beginning the of pandemic I always started all my emails asking how anyone's loved ones health was so I knew when to show more compassion in general around things like if a marketing member told me their kid was sick I would ask how they kid was doing in followups and offer to help with the work I gave them

[FKhadraoui]

ACTUALLY THE LACK OF COUCHING 

[TahaAurangzeb]

Time consumed in administrative task is eatcing a huge chunk out of main goal which is to sell if in a way this could be minimized, selling increases.

[ajansen]

A sales process that

• is undocumented - No formal process that would guide someone with uncertainty on the process. This delays the process as the salesperson has to seek guidance.
• has no training built in at regular intervals - there is no way to structure a standardized approach to sales when there simply is no opportunity to train people
• is carried out by people with multiple responsibility areas - No designated sales people means that technical and admin/billing teams have to focus on a wide breadth of targets in the multiple responsibility areas rather than focus on sales and onboarding.

These are a few issues that are especially common issues for small teams which require some creative problem solving and steps towards scaling either the needed manpower e.g outsourcing sales, or to develop a designated person/team and process.

[JOpie]

Great points! I would only add neglecting marketing and leaving that in the hands of salespersons only.

[Roofa20]

Unefficent attitude, lack of customer personalization, no feedback and full awareness of the prospect. 

[mstinnett]

Lack of focus due to mental fatigue.

[VBecerra]

Sifting through prospects.

[JOrmaa]

Time consuming inefficient prospecting and administrative manual tasks takes focus, energy and time away from actual selling, getting to know better the customers team and buying processes, and making a difference in doing good follow ups.

[BShesterniak]

Probably - some kind of fear to sell for huge companies and insuffiicient confidence - for some salesreps - beginners

[InduChoudary]

that's why sales training is a must, to help them land the right customers and help them build that confidence to reach out to even big companies to sell to them.

[CGatlos]

Not having all facts and info ready before a call.

[JSmith13]

Lead list not imported into Hubspot

[DanielBlume]

Either organizational attitude or lack of clear understanding of target customer 

[CJulian]

Selling to wrong market and/or lack of market demand.  If there's truly demand, in theory, you could have the worst salesperson and the product will sell itself.

[EStewart]

It is all about strategizing and making sure you are matching the right sales team with the right customers to the best of your ability. 

[dsimmons631]

when you can integrate softwares to speed up the process

[MarvOkechi]

Data entry tasks, when you can integrate softwares to speed up the process