Working in sales is tough and salespeople are faced with challenges every day of the week. But what are the toughest tasks that sales teams face on a daily basis? I got a group of the Simply Sales Jobs sales team together to discuss it.
First up, and one of the challenges that came up most frequently was CLOSING THE DEAL. You may have grafted together 5 deals in the month but none of the deals are sealed. You might know they’re close to completion but you’ve got your manager on your back questioning why you’ve brought no deals in. Not a great feeling! However, once you’ve sealed the deal there’s a definite sense of satisfaction that not many job roles can offer.
ORGANISING THE DAY was on everyone’s lists, a painful task that should be done at the start or end of everyone’s day. You need to figure out who you’ll be calling in the day, what deals can get closed off, who needs chasing up, etc, etc…
STAYING POSITIVE, there aren’t many job roles that serve up rejection quite as frequently as a sales role, so staying positive is the key to a successful career.
You’d be surprised at how many of the team decided that MAKING THE FIRST CALL was one of the hardest parts of the day, it’s easy to get distracted by colleagues or to get sucked into Facebook to find out what your friends got up to that evening. One particular member of the team lives by the phrase ‘First is the Worst’…
Unsurprisingly HITTING TARGETS was up there with some of the hardest tasks. This is mainly down to the pressure from managers and the pressure to earn that commission once the target has been ‘smashed’ to put it in terms often bandied around the office.
Something that’s often forgotten about it the importance of a STRUCTURED CALL. Making sure that pitches to new clients are perfect and that nothing is forgotten about mid-call. Training is often offered in-house or externally in most organisations.
GETTING HOLD OF DECISION MAKERS, if I had a penny for every time I saw a colleague on LinkedIn I’d probably have a few quid. Of course, there are other ways to do this but finding the contact details for that decision maker can be a tough task that’s experienced by every salesperson.
How many times have you been ‘in the zone’, only to be asked an irrelevant question by a co-worker? I can guarantee it happens in any office environment and the Simply office is no different. OFFICE DISTRACTIONS are one of many things that a salesperson has to work around.
WORKING THROUGH BREAKS, not at the top of the list of tough tasks but brought up a few times none the less. A Simply team member stated that one of the things he hated most was having to miss the ‘butty’ van’s arrival in order to get a phone call to one of the decision makers.
TIME MANAGEMENT is something that’s wasn’t brought up enough. You’re only able to call potential deal makers at certain times of the day so it’s highly important that you make use of your time within the office, if that means WORKING THROUGH BREAKS then so be it, you might miss that sausage ‘butty’ but I doubt you’ll be worried about that at the end of the month when you’ve brought in a couple of hundred quid more in commission.
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