Possessing effective selling skills is not enough. You need the ability to read the selling scenario and understand which skill is needed at that moment. The ability to seamlessly transition from one skill to another as you engage with a variety of customers is exactly what you need.
Salespeople are troubled with different hindrances that appear on their way to progress and thwarts their development. Notwithstanding, they will in general disregard ignore the problems instead of striving to find a solution.
With the aim of finding answers to the problems sales experts face, we tried identifying some challenges faced in sales and listed it with the solutions, hopefully, it will help you in addressing some of your sales barriers:
1. Competing with lower-priced competitors: The most common selling strategy used by competitors for excelling in the market is to drop the price. Beating the low ballers might seem difficult but it isn’t impossible.
Solution: Competition is the ugly truth of business and sometimes it can get nasty. If a competitor is undercutting your price, then you need to react by further positioning your offerings as more valuable than others in the market. It is all about keeping your company on its own path.
Find areas where you compete favourably and put up a comparison chart on your website. Be explicit — assume that your customers know about your competitors.
2. Prospects stop responding: After the first few interactions, you might witness a drop in response rate. At this point, you would either ignore the deal or waste time worrying about the reason for the prospect being unresponsive.
Solution: Clearly, there is something in particular that is not prompting the prospect to respond, so it’s a great opportunity to haul out a plan B. Build curiosity with a compelling subject line or strike a conversation with someone else from the company. Explore various contact hours. Call or email your prospect at different timings of the day.
Make your closes explicit, and switch them up. As opposed to requesting another meeting or call, request general data. For instance, you could ask, “I’m attempting to better understand your organization. Where can I learn more about [X project, team, announcement]?”
3. Lack of focus on sales due to extra administrative tasks: You are loaded with the burden of extra administrative activities that consume precious hours and affects sales performance.
Solution: Use a sales automation tool to set workflows and automate most of the repetitive tasks. Try finding meaning in each task and set a time limit or hire sales support personnel. You can as well create documents like brochures, business cards, flyers and case studies in seconds using free sales templates and save valuable time.
Sales is challenging but it has abundant opportunities. It is all about identifying and tackling the obstacles on your way to success.
Follow these guidelines and you will be climbing the sales ladder in no time.
Happy Selling!
