There is no greater nightmare for a sales manager than when sales just stop happening!
Without having any clue as to what’s going on, a sales manager will have a tendency to come down hard on their salespeople when sales slow down. Much of the time this translates to yelling and screaming. At the very least it usually means speaking harshly to the reps.
On the sales rep side, this treatment can translate to serious stress—and the salesperson has no more of a clue as to why sales aren’t moving than the sales manager does. This kind of stress is why so many salespeople don’t want to sell anymore; they want out from under all that pressure.
As with all things, the answer to this problem is actually very simple.
The Earlier Undone Step
All sales organizations have a sales process—and if you don’t, you’d better get one fast. Without it, you’re flying blind and are probably losing sales without even knowing it. Contact us, and we can help you with precise sales process development.
Let’s assume, though, that you do have a sales process that all salespeople follow.
As with the answer to just about anything, the answer to the problem of stuck sales is a simple one: you simply need to look for the last unfinished or unsuccessful step of the sales process. Find that, get it completed, and you’ll get the salesperson moving again. Just make sure the salesperson completes the rest of the steps for that sale, too!
Rapid Analysis
When you’re working with a team, you will rarely have enough time to sit down with each sales rep, talk to them and isolate at which stage of the sales process a sale is hung up. There is a much faster way of analyzing the entire team and seeing trouble spots right away so that you can dive right in and quickly resolve them.
We cover this much more thoroughly in another of this month’s blogs, but the answer is to make sure you have an accurate metric for each stage of the sales process, for each salesperson.
As an example, let us say that you’re trying to find out why your salesperson Raphael is not doing well this particular month. You look over each of the metrics for each of the sales process steps and discover that he’s hardly making any contacts at all. Of course, if he’s not making contacts, he’s not going to be able to bring prospects the rest of the way through the sales process! Deal with that, and Raphael will be cooking once again.
As a note, you should ensure that your metrics are accurate so that your analyses will be correct. If you ever have a question of their accuracy, just ask yourself this question: if you had to go back and find out why sales were stuck, what specific actions, done or not done, would you be looking for?
Find out more! Sign up at SELLability.com
