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You’ve just interviewed someone who seems to be a perfect fit to sell for your company. They have lots of industry experience, interviewed well and their references didn’t have a negative thing to say about them. Now you have them on your payroll and very quickly they go from stud to dud. What happened?
While industry experience is valuable and they may have even taken some professional sales training, they may have a problem between their ears. When we were very young, it wasn’t unusual to have our parents tell us, “Don’t talk to strangers.” Some of our parents may have also told us, “It’s not polite to talk about money.” So now we are in sales and what does our boss want us to do? No wonder it’s tough to get salespeople to do prospecting calls.
Here are some of the things that hold people back from being as successful in sales as they could be:
Insufficient desire and or commitment. Successful people have great inner drive and enough commitment to push through when the going gets tough.
Not self-motivated. It’s very difficult to motivate someone who is not already self-motivated.
Low self-esteem. People who have a healthy self-esteem are more willing to do the risky things needed to succeed. They aren’t afraid of rejection and they are more willing to call at the top (C level executives). They say to themselves, “Some will, some won’t, so what………next.”
Poor Buy Cycle. This is the way people go about making a major purchase. If you are the kind of person who takes a long time to make a major purchase and you must think about it for a long time, you will expect the same behavior with your prospects. When the prospect says, “I have to think it over,” you say to yourself, “That makes sense. That’s what I would do.” And while they are thinking it over, a better salesperson comes along and closes the sale. Another problem is with salespeople who buy primarily on price when they are the customer. If what you sell isn’t cheaper than your competition, they may have a tough time creating value and showing your customer why he should pay more.
Need for Approval. We all have this to some degree, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But if the need for approval is too high, it can get in the way of closing. People with a high need for approval may avoid asking the tough questions they should ask, like, “Do you want to buy something?”
Money Weakness. There are two parts to money weakness; uncomfortable talking about money and money concept, meaning what they think is a lot of money. They may not be willing to ask the prospect how much money she is willing to invest, so they spend hours preparing a million-dollar presentation which may be more than the prospect is willing and able to spend — or it might be too low, leaving a lot of money on the table.
Here a few other issues that create poor results but that management can control:
Wrong compensation. Not being paid for results or being paid for the wrong results.
Poor management. Not holding people accountable. No formal training, coaching or mentoring. No support system.
No or poor sales process. Salespeople shoot from the hip. Prospects are in total control. Salespeople don’t know how to differentiate from the competition or how to sell on value instead of price.
The next time you decide to hire a sales professional, be sure to look for those hidden weaknesses and be sure you have the right compensation, management and sales process to help them be successful.
Good selling.
