What do you do if your sales efforts fall short and you need to recover quickly?

When assessing your pipeline, be objective. Clear out any deals that you know aren't going anywhere. You could shift them to the nurturing bucket, but by the end of this exercise, you want your pipeline to accurately reflect deals at the correct stages of the sales process. Then, for each deal that's qualified, figure out what's needed to close it, and take action. Remember, hope is not a strategy! Get rid of the "happy ears" and assess every deal with a clear, objective lens.

If sales efforts fall short, focus on quick recovery by reassessing strategies. Identify reasons for the shortfall, adjust sales tactics, emphasize value proposition, offer promotions/discounts, engage with existing customers for upselling/cross-selling opportunities, target new markets, ramp up marketing efforts, and provide exceptional customer service. Encourage feedback, analyze data for insights, retrain sales teams if necessary, and stay proactive to turn the situation around rapidly. Swift action, flexibility, and a customer-centric approach can help regain momentum and drive sales success.

As you examine each deal in your pipeline, pinpoint any gaps. It's possible you'll discover a recurring issue across all your deals. This might be because you're not engaging with the correct individuals, or perhaps you're failing to effectively communicate the value of your solution, or maybe your demo isn't tailored to the prospective buyers' business objectives. After identifying these gaps, it's important to take steps to address them. Ask your supervisor, colleagues, and mentor for strategies to tackle specific challenges. Avoid going it alone. Especially within a medium to large sales team, it's most likely that the challenges you're encountering have been faced—and possibly resolved—by others.

According to Forbes, skills required for the sales roles are expected to evolve by 65% by 2030. If you're not constantly making time to learn and improve, you will be left behind. People are afraid that AI will replace their jobs but as Dr. Karim Lakhani of Harvard said, "AI won’t replace humans—but humans WITH AI will replace humans WITHOUT AI." So as sellers, we need to ensure that we are upleveling our skillset to meet the shifting needs and behaviors of our buyers. In addition to leveraging GenAI as an assistant, how are we upleveling our virtual selling skills, social selling skills, analytical skills, etc.?

Our networks which we have cultivated over time, are valuable and can open doors and bring in opportunities. Its a life line of sorts - and assuming we have taken the time to build trusted relationships and partnered them on various initiatives. Makes it much easier to get support, pointers and guidance.

Repackage products, run limited time promos can help. These initiatives will be much more successful if we already have the market reach , have a good client and prospect base. So in the sales effort, expanding the base, the markets, should be an imperative. Keep going and building, so we can mitigate the risks of getting to a stage where ‘many things have failed’.

In order to recover quickly from falling short in your sales, review the stages of selling from top to bottom. Start with reaching the buyer. Are you falling short because there is not much on your pipeline? Then double, triple your effort. Look elsewhere to be where the action is. Assess how you are connecting with the buyer. Do you stand out from a sea of suppliers? Do you get the attention of the buyer? Does the buyer look at you as someone to trust with crucial information to increase your chances of getting the order? Lastly, are you connecting your product or service to the buyer. Is your story good enough to help the buyer feel they are going to be satisfied in using your product or service?