It has been said that “Good things come to those who wait.” But the actual fact of the matter is, good things come to those who go out and make them happen.
This leads us to our topic for this particular blog: Are your salespeople waiting for sales to close?
Beyond the fact that this is a surefire way of watching your business slowly go down the drain, it is a very lazy approach to selling. Your salespeople should be actively leading sales through to closes, wherever and whenever possible. Waiting will never make sales happen anywhere.
From the standpoint of analyzing through Sales CPR, there might be one of several reasons for such a lack of activity.
1. No sales process.
This is more common than many think. The company might assume that “everybody knows” the process to bring a sale from prospect to close. But if that process has not been formulated, tested, and written down for everyone to follow, then it is quite likely that very few know it…and it is quite possible nobody knows it.
That means a salesperson is flying blind, reaches a certain point with a prospect, then the prospect stops communicating and does not reach back, and the salesperson is left waiting.
The answer, in this case, is to formulate an effective sales process right away, get it out to all the salespeople, and have them regularly drill it.
2. An unknown sales process.
In other words, the company does have a sales process, and it probably worked well sometime in the past. But for various reasons, such as turnover in management and sales for example, the sales process has fallen by the wayside and is not used anymore.
The result is similar to number one—the salesperson gets to a particular point with the prospect, then the prospect “disappears”, and the salesperson waits.
The answer is to dig that sales process back out, get it known again, and get salespeople drilling it and using it.
3. Skipped sales process steps.
This becomes especially prominent when the pressure becomes overly heavy on salespeople to close sales. The pressure is answered by trying to skip to the close, instead of making sure that every sales process stage is completed.
The problem is that no sale will close unless every sales process step has been done…no matter how long anyone waits.
The answer here is to pull out the sales process, and regularly drill it. And it is important that particular attention should be paid to completing every step.
