There are 2 ways to deal with a sales problem; emotion or logic. I bet you can guess which one of these 2 options are chosen most often. It’s sad to see newer sales representatives or sales leaders conclude that their sales problems are beyond solving. The economy, lack of quality prospects, competition, and even unsatisfactory self-assessment for a good job fit are just some of the perceived causes for failure to achieve sales goals.
It is true that all businesses and jobs can have external challenges, but often, applying logic will result in practical solutions to the problem of not enough sales. I like to refer to this as a troubleshooting framework. Applying this strategy as a first response has benefited me and many others over the years.
Let’s start with a troubleshooting framework for a sales representative.
In this illustration the first question to ask if you are not hitting your sales goals is whether you are giving enough closing presentations. We all know you can’t make a sale if you don’t ask someone to buy and we also know not everyone will buy. Hopefully you know what the targeted number of closing presentations you need to give to make your targeted number of sales. Let’s say for example your goal for the month is 10 sales and you know 1 out of every 3 closing presentations results in a sale. That means you need to give 30 presentations per month or 7-8 per week. A quick look at your activity tracker will tell you whether you are meeting that activity goal. If you are, you need to work on improving in the areas of building value and closing. If you are not meeting the activity goal, you need to figure out why. A good place to start is looking at your schedule and determining if you’re working enough hours generating new prospective customers that you can engage with for closing presentations.
The point is, by applying logic instead of emotion, you can troubleshoot where you need to concentrate your energy or improve your skill. This illustration shows how simple the troubleshooting is.
Let’s take a look at a sales leader who is responsible for a team sales goal.
Using the same idea the first question might be do you have enough salespeople? Suppose the average salesperson produces 10 new sales per month. Your goal is 100 sales per month for the team. You only have 7 salespeople. This framework would lead you to focus on filling those 3 vacant sales positions as your priority. You may have some other problems, but this one is easily identifiable.
Maybe you have enough salespeople. The framework would lead you to ask questions about the effectiveness of your training. Also, to look at whether the salespeople are spending enough time in the field.
The big take away for this is that you must choose whether or not you are going to be influenced most heavily by either logic or emotion. If you choose logic (my suggestion) you will need to adopt a mindset that measuring key metrics is important. A number watched will do what it’s supposed to do. If you can’t or won’t measure it, it’s impossible to manage it. You will be left with the only other option which is emotion. Emotional people don’t learn well. Just try teaching a drowning person to swim.
If you find this article resonating with you and would like to have a conversation, reach out to me and let’s schedule some time. You can reach me at jkenney@safestreets.com.