Prospecting Challenges Part 2 of 3: How To Solve The Eternal Sales Dilemma: Prospecting-Time vs Selling-Time

We touched on the important aspects of sales lead quantity and lead quality in Part 1 of this article.

It will be continued in Part 3, called How To Do Effective Sales Prospecting in a Pandemic

So let's dig now into WHY sales reps are struggling and explore potential solutions.

I think it's a given that the biggest challenge is that reps are not achieving their assigned sales targets. Famously, the TAS Group quantified this, saying that "67% of sales professionals do not achieve their personal sales quota". I know there are other statistics out there that quantify this challenge slightly differently, but they're all in the same ball park. The point is that a lot of reps are not performing as well as their employers expect of them.

"67% of sales professionals do not achieve their personal sales quota." (TAS Group)

But why is that so?

Because B2B Sales Leaders all over the world are facing three specific challenges to their sales growth ambitions. What are these three, and what are the underlying causes? Is it a matter of inadequate capabilities, adverse market forces, or unrealistic sales targets?

So, what are the underlying causes? Is it a matter of sales reps' inadequate capabilities, adverse market forces, or unrealistic sales targets?

While certainly all three of the above play some part in the shortcoming, here is what I think three of the key reasons are:

1. Not enough Quality Leads to fill the Sales Pipeline and provide adequate Deal Coverage

Sales Managers demand that reps work a sufficient volume of potential deals to achieve their individual sales targets. As not 100% of all deals will be won, they also demand that reps allow for that contingency by working enough deals to achieve their assigned individual sales targets (quota), but do that several times over. This is called Deal Coverage and can represent anything from two to five times the reps' individual sales target or quota.

One sales leader I spoke to recently told me: "On average we win 20% of our deals, so I demand 5-times deal coverage from my reps." I'll let you be the judge of what is behind that sentence but one thing is clear: As a rep you are supposed to generate enough leads to fill your sales pipeline in order to achieve sufficient deal coverage AND close enough deals to reach or exceed your sales target or quota.

With only 24 hours in the day, a sales rep's precious selling time competes with time thieves such as administrative tasks, CRM data entry, sales forecasting, reporting and cadence meetings, leaving very little time remaining for actual selling activities.

According to CSO Insights, less than 35% of a sales rep’s time is spent on selling.

Less than 35% of a sales rep’s time is spent on selling. (CSO Insights)

So, the question is whether prospecting is actually a wise use of a sales rep's time, or whether they'd be better off if someone else did the prospecting while the rep focuses their precious time on selling activities.

There are pros and cons to both alternatives. I have tried to illustrated the dilemma in the image below.

Do-it-Yourself (DIY) prospecting has the benefit that the rep can keep total control of everything: Which prospects to contact, the mode of communication, what he/she says, the timing, the context and content, their personal style, their skills, etc.

The downside is that it takes massive amounts of time and specialist skills to do prospecting well. All of which in the wrong hands can lead to inconsistent results and - even worse - can negatively impact personal and company brands, if handled poorly.

But, there is an even more difficult impediment to reps' prospecting success: Sales reps’ time spent on prospecting is becoming increasingly unproductive.

Sales reps’ time spent on prospecting is becoming increasingly unproductive.

Here is why:

2. Prospects are becoming increasingly harder to reach

Just look at your own experiences.

How well do you tolerate cold calls and unsolicited offers from faceless salespeople?

Do you welcome them with open arms, or do you view them as rude interruptions to your busy day and life? Senior executives tell me that they can receive one hundred approaches a day, or more, and that if they were to accept every invitation to "just a 15-minute call" or "a quick chat" they would have no time left to do their day job. There is now an abundance of channels that salespeople can leverage to contact their prospects on a daily basis: Phone, Text, Email, Social Media Platforms, even old fashioned snail mail.

It is no wonder that prospects feel under attack and that they instinctively respond by figuratively curling up into a ball and withdrawing from contact altogether. How many times have you heard a prospect say: "No matter what you're selling, I'm NOT INTERESTED!"?

So, as prospects no longer tolerate mass emails and unsolicited cold calls, and as they withdraw and become increasingly harder to reach, sales reps' time spent on prospecting is becoming even less productive. This has the consequence of making reps less productive.

"No matter what you're selling, I'm NOT INTERESTED!"

This, in turn, is leading to another, bigger problem: Prospects have built a defensive wall to protect themselves from unwelcome solicitations. Now, reps need to become more sophisticated in their prospect engagement, i.e. they will need to add value, intrigue and inspire, advise, challenge and educate their prospects in order to break through.

Sales reps need to become more sophisticated in their prospect engagement.

Here is the rub: Doing all the above takes time. Time to learn the know-how and to acquire the skills, then time to implement their skills, which can amount to 10 to 20+ hours per week spent purely on prospecting.

And here is why that is so:

Prospecting is becoming harder and more time consuming. Yet, sales reps still need a constant stream of high-quality leads in order to achieve their sales targets and quota.

Prospecting is becoming harder and more time consuming. Yet, sales reps still need a constant stream of high-quality leads in order to achieve their sales targets and quota.

But, it gets worse. There is one more obstacle in a sales rep's path to closing a sale.

3. Sales Cycles are getting longer, as Customers increasingly involve multiple internal Decision Makers

According to Gartner, it's not only salespeople who struggle with making a sale. Prospects and buyers are also struggling. The irony is that they are struggling to buy.

Here is what Gartner says:

"The typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to ten decision makers? each armed with four or five pieces of information they’ve gathered independently and must de-conflict with the group. At the same time, the set of options and solutions buying groups can consider is expanding as new technologies, products, suppliers and services emerge."

And the consequence is this, again, according to Gartner:

"These dynamics make it increasingly difficult for customers to make purchases. In fact, more than three-quarters of the customers Gartner surveyed described their purchase as very complex or difficult."

Prospects and buyers are also struggling. The irony is that they are struggling to buy.

I think Gartner described the situation well in the sentences above. There simply is no longer a mystical single decision maker. High value, high impact and highly complex purchases now involve multiple stakeholders. This is a response by businesses to de-risk their decision-making.

Thus, the stakeholders may include:

• The financial buyer, i.e. the person whose budget the purchase will come out of
• The CFO, who is interested that the purchase makes financial sense, measured as the Return On Investment (ROI) and perhaps the Internal Rate Of Return (IRR)
• The technical buyer (maybe the CIO), who wants to be sure the purchase is not going to give him or her headaches in terms of technical support, backup and reliability
• A user buyer who is concerned with ease of use and the rate of user adoption (nobody wants to buy something that is not going to be used)
• Maybe the CEO, who wants to keep the board happy and not have the purchase decision negatively impact his personal brand and career ambitions
• others

It's easy to see how each of the above has differing perspectives and requirements when assessing the vendors bidding for the deal. Sales reps need to satisfy each of these (sometimes competing) interests in order to be the last man, or woman, standing. Equally, it is easy to see how the above prolong the sales cycle and buying time alike.

So, there you have them, my three top reasons that salespeople do not meet their sales targets or quota.

So, what is the solution?

So, what is the solution?

I'll answer that question in Part 3 of this series. Look out for it.

Conclusion

Clearly, the old ways of lead generation by pummeling a maximum number of prospects with unsolicited and generic messages are no longer effective. In fact, they have the opposite effect: Not only do they put potential buyers off, but they can also destroy reputations and personal and corporate brands. Burning a thousand prospects in the hope of catching just two, three, five or perhaps ten that are interested is bad for business.

For the above reasons, sellers now need to be more sophisticated in their prospecting approach.

They need to add value to a buyer, be it through specialist knowledge, industry insight, or through alerting and advising them on unforeseen risks and new opportunities. These need to be spelled out in terms of impact on the business and on the decision makers personally in terms of their specific interests, concerns and, let's not forget, their personal ambitions.

Expecting reps to do all this, and do it effectively, AND still achieve sales targets is a tall ask.

In my experience and in my personal opinion, it makes total sense to separate sales prospecting and sales advancement and closing activities in terms of competencies and responsibilities, particularly in the context of social selling.

Sales organizations need to determine whether the use of internal sales development representatives (SDRs) and call centers is their best option, or whether they are better off outsourcing the generation of sales leads to specialist experts, such as a specialist services provider.

Whichever way you choose, you need to make sure that you go about it in the right, sophisticated and most effective way. Your selling success depends on it.

In Part 3 of this article I will focus more specifically on prospecting on LinkedIn. I will go into the pros and cons, and, importantly, will also propose what I believe is an ideal solution to the problems outlined above.

So, look out for Part 3, called How To Do Effective Sales Prospecting in a Pandemic

- END of Part 2 of 3 -

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About Peter

Peter Strohkorb is a highly experienced sales and marketing specialist in the IT, Technology and Services sector, an acclaimed Amazon book author, blogger, thought leader and influencer. 

He has helped many executives just like you to achieve significant success in growing their sales revenue, raising their profile and increasing market share.

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