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. 

[JBarnes22]

I'm currently not in a workplace, but I can speak on the last one I was a member of. What kept reps from selling was the lack of proper training & accountability.

[MTobari]

Lack of product knowledge

[azannis]

Too much time spent to create personalised offers to customers due to a lot of different products offered. 

Also, travelling to customers is a period during which not much tasks or activities can be completed (especially while driving)  

[ASeidl]

What keeps reps from selling? 

Lack of personalization with the product. Lack of desire. Inability of structure.

[BRzempoluch]

other administrative tasks that we don't have enough administrative staff to help with

[WHowery]

Not having a system in place causes reps to be disorganized and unfocused.  Systems and structure seem to help our Marketers to be most effective.

[KeithIgoe]

When reps don't recognize that they have a duty to provide value to their leads, they can lose touch with their sales process and lose opportunities to sell.

[alyssandrabrook]

What is keeping them from selling is, as Kyle Jepson explained, is that you must have your CEO or owner see how the reps go. You as a company must put in hard work and dedication because you can always build a better product.  

[WBarber]

Currently, price lists are inconsistent and unclear. This is friction slowing our sales reps. 

[AOwens413]

What Keeps your reps from selling?

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

[PDiwan]

Mostly the responses to customers would vary because of inability of structured data. I have seen different sales people of same organization providing completely different answers to similar questions from the similar customers. This purely happens because even when personalization is there, sales persons would have very limited recall for standardization of responses or situations.

A system having structured respnoses to similar persona of customers and recommending it to sales people is very essential.

[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.