“Regardless of product type, industry, or company size, the growth of a company lives and dies by the success of its sales”. I read this in a Salesforce report and couldn’t agree more. 

When sales are strong, you can focus on profit planning, growth, and investing in your team. But without sales, your business is at best a hobby or at worst a financial burden.

The biggest sales challenges I’m seeing in businesses right now are…

• Sales are feeling chaotic, there’s no system, structure, specific sales plan alongside your business plan. 

• Your team could be more proactive in getting out there and talking to clients, finding other ways to help them. Instead, they’re being reactive, waiting for the phone to ring (or email to come in) and leaving money on the table.  

• Finding the time to nurture connections, relationships, warm leads and prospects. I mean its damn busy right!? 

Looking at the sales trends over the last 12 months, we’re seeing that…

• Sales cycles are longer with more decision makers needing to be involved in the sales conversations (tighter budgets will do that!) 

• Conversion rates are lower… one contributor to this is because salespeople are giving up before getting a definitive yes, no or maybe (80% of effective sales requires at least 5 follow up calls after the first meeting, yet 44% people give up after the first try. How many follow ups are in your sales process?) 

• Distrust is more widespread than ever before. With the growing amount of scams, spamming and AI it’s completely understandable that people don’t know who, where or what to trust! I mean, I don’t like answering my phone to unknown numbers – do you? Yet another reason it’s getting tougher out there. 

• People are struggling (your clients and your team alike) with all that is going on in the world on top of the ever-pressing need to keep up with the pace of work that’s become the norm. And so again, it’s no wonder salespeople are even more hesitant than usual about doing sales reach outs for fear of being ‘annoying’ or ‘intrusive’ (their words, not mine). 

• Sales has a bad rap. In a sales workshop I ran recently, 75% of people felt that sales is a necessary evil or something they avoid as much as possible. How your team feels about selling your products and services has a huge impact on the bottom line. You can have the best tools, strategies and systems in place but it’s their perception of sales that will subconsciously help or hinder their results.

Knowing these challenges allows you to prepare and plan for them, making sure the hustle stays healthy. If this era is teaching us anything, it’s how to be more resilient, consistent and creative when it comes to establishing and nurturing leads, prospects and client relationships.

How creative are your team when it comes to contact types and reach outs?

Most people want to avoid making cold contacts and reach outs because it feels the most awkward. Fair enough! Here’s some easy solutions for you to play with…

• Get great at nurturing warm and hot leads so there’s no need to do cold contacts

• Work closely with your marketing team (sales and marketing alignment can lead to 38% higher sales win rates, drive more than 200% revenue growth and 36% higher customer retention).

• Move away from the ‘traditional’ sales process to an ‘active’ sales process which includes more touch points 

• DON’T just rely on emails to contact and engage people – have a minimum of five touch points when establishing or nurturing relationships. 

• Understand your team’s natural selling style. This allows you to structure their day around their strengths and identify what support they need to build skills. 

If you want to double your team’s sales and get more yes’s, even in a tough market – Grab The Yes Code™️ HERE (only $100 until the 6th June).

Happy selling, 

Nicky 

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