Poor sales figures don’t necessarily mean poor selling

You look up and sales are well behind the mark. The first thought is that sales people are not closing enough sales. While this is essentially true, poor selling is often not the actual culprit. Our resident blogger, sales expert Sean McPheat, explains what other factors could be dragging down the sales team.

Processes, Procedures and Record Keeping

Often poor sales are the result of other, less obvious causes. Poor contact management, inefficient follow up and ineffective after-the-sale processes will cost your organisation more sales than difficult objections.

Get IT Together

My friend, expert sales person and trainer, John Landrine, in the US, told me that he has turned down business from potential clients simply because they did not have, or refused to upgrade their CRM (Customer Relationships Management) or other sales support structures.

A company comes along and needs sales training. John helps the company with great sales training on prospecting and closing. However, due to poor CRM and sales process management, the company’s sales figures never really increase. The result is as a client who says, “Yeah, we hired John for sales training and it didn’t help…” So, John opts to forgo such business instead. While I try not to be as rigid as John is, I do understand his sentiment.

From this blog alone, you will gain a wealth of sales knowledge and valuable tips that will help you to grow and earn more money. However, you must have a foundation in place to handle the growth.

So often, I see a company invest tons of time and money in doing everything possible to drive more qualified traffic to their web site, only to see a large percentage of those leads go to waste!

There Is More To Professional Sales Than Selling

Please understand that the selling process, that is, generating opportunity and closing the sale, is but a part of the business process. Sales support, CRM, delivery/fulfilment procedures, after-the-sale service, follow-up, maintenance, and much more, are all part of selling!

A Few Thoughts

Here are a few things to keep in mind as you grow, build, solve problems for clients and strive for success.

1 – Utilise Advanced CRM Methodology

I talk about this every day. Please, invest in a sophisticated software system, in house or virtually, that can offer true relationships management. In addition, in fact BEFORE the software, you must create a sales process that clearly defines every step of the sale from a raw piece of data to a qualified prospect to a satisfied customer and beyond. Document it and infuse it into the CRM.

2 – Create Proper Processes and Procedures

Exactly what happens (or is supposed to happen) when someone closes a sale? If you cannot precisely explain every step—in detail and document it—then you do not have a solid procedure. Yes, you may have competent people who know what they need to do, but that is not a procedure. Without a documented process in place, you have no checks-and-balances to know when things do not work right. In addition, when things go wrong, you cannot efficiently make the proper adjustments because you do not know exactly what you were doing in the first place.

3 – Get the Right People Doing the Right Jobs

Too often sales people spend large amounts of time with non-sales or non-income producing tasks. I understand that times are tight and the economy does not help. However, the last place to cut back is on sales support.

When professional sales people, whose job it is to generate new business and close sales, have to spend time doing anything BUT that, it cost you in more ways than you may imagine. The fact that when the sales person is handling other non-selling tasks, he or she is not generating sales is obvious.

However, also realise that the sales person is likely not as skilled at those other tasks as others may be. When the sales person is handling administrative tasks or trying to collect on unpaid invoices, understand that not only is the salesperson NOT selling, but also, he or she is probably not very good at those administrative tasks or collecting money. Your organisation loses twice. Invest in sales support and keep sales people spending at least 90% of their time doing what they do best.

The House

Building a successful sales organisation is like building anything else; you must first have a solid foundation.

Happy Selling!

Sean

Author Credit:

Managing Director of MTD Sales Training, Sean McPheat is regarded as a thought leader on modern day selling, management skills and business improvement. Sean has been featured on CNN, ITV, BBC, SKY, Forbes, Arena Magazine and has over 250 other media credits to his name. Sean’s Sales Blog is visited by 5,000 people every week and his 6 Sales Training Audios are free to download. Click here to follow Sean online.

Browse sales jobs today on www.simplysalesjobs.co.uk.

Upload your CV and receive email job alerts.

[simplyjobs site_url=”https://www.simplysalesjobs.co.uk/” placement=”post” site_name=”Simply Sales Jobs” username=”SEO_TEAM” password=”fmgseo” feed_identifier=”blog_ssj_all” ][/simplyjobs]