Why most sales teams fail

Sales is an interesting world to be in. We think sales reps make a ton of money in commissions every month, businesses make millions in revenue from outbound sales alone. Think again!

Only a segment of all sales folks earn a predictable revenue, and only a segment of all businesses succeed consistently year-on-year to multiply their revenue inflow.

Why could this be?

We live in a sales world which is increasingly moving from power of information in the hands of the seller [or hands of a few] to the age of prospects or customers powered with quality information. Scary as it is, it is the world we live in, and the old methods just aren’t suited anymore.

Historically

We have come quite a distance from a world of information asymmetry, where the seller has more information about the product/ service than the buyer, and buyer is left evaluate/assess the quality of service/ product before purchase is made - Buyer Beware [Caveat Emptor].

The world has reached a stage of information parity, where buyers are equipped with all forms of data regarding the product/service(s) that they’re exploring and seller has to come prepared to acknowledge and address customer objections, queries, comparisons, concerns before he can make a sale - Seller Beware [Caveat Venditor].

Psychology

Many sales teams still approach prospects as though this information parity has not happened. What does this mean? They still attempt to spray and pray one message to anyone and everyone who look like a potential customer. This doesn’t help.

In an age where people get hundreds of emails, messages, calls from salespeople every week, if what we intend to convey is perceived as of no/not enough value, the conversation has ended before it’s even begun.

How can we tackle this?

To get a conversation going we have to get a couple of things right:

• Reach the optimal organization for your service/product
• Reach the right person at this organization for whom this could be relevant
• Think in their shoes, is this something they need imminently? If not, what outcome of theirs are we effecting by bringing this, How much time / money/ resources are you saving, how are we making their life easier with this product/ service - Our messaging should be centered only around this angle.
• Use the right message. There is no one size fits all

1. One wouldn’t send the same pitch email to a CEO and VP,Sales of a company. Each has their own unique targets, goals, objectives
2. To weave a value add that wraps around their persona/ professional objectives

• Follow up fanatically

1. One touch is never enough
2. Sales is all about follow up.
3. Follow up till prospect asks you to stop/ raises an objection
4. Don’t use the same question in every touch

• Be Creative

1. Nobody likes getting the same message. Repackage your value proposition, hint at a benefit earlier not addressed, share a case study, an industry benchmark that you meet etc.
2. Stop using phrases like ‘Touch Base’, ‘Just Checking in’.
3. Instead work on sharing a thought the prospect would not have expected, comment on one of their questions on LinkedIn / social media, find a value add they did not outright expect - do something out of the ordinary to add value to a prospect - expecting nothing in return.

• Never get comfortable

1. Just because a few prospects show sign of interest, do not stop prospecting.
2. You never know when a prospect might back out, they are inundated with similar messages daily from many other competitors/ is not the best fit for your service.

• Never give up - unless a prospect says an absolute NO.

Consistent pipeline of leads help to make this journey easier

Now, half the work is taken care of if we do the prospecting right. If we find the ideal mix of prospects/ leads for sharing about your value proposition, we’d save a whole lot of time that would have otherwise gone failing, learning, failing again, learning again reaching out to leads that end up being non ideal for your business.

The backbone of a healthy, repeatable, consistent and scalable outbound sales process is having a right prospecting engine. Very few companies get this right, and often take months and years to build this to a consistent, yet profitable model.

It includes investing in a sales development team, and hire inclusive of Lead Generators, Sales Development Reps[SDR], Data Analysts, who work together build a system of leads, which are segmented, and reached out particular to the value add for each segment. These leads are nurtured, till they are educated about the service &/ ready to meet, which is then subsequently handed off to the Account Executives to close. Read more about this at our blog on ‘Why salespeople should not prospect’.

Challenges in this process

While this is a process that can be grown to a certain level of efficiency, it is highly dependent on the quality of hires, retention, the coaching provided to the team, the ratio of the SDR-AE, the sales cycle for the particular product and industry etc. But at the minimum it normally tends to take around 6 months from the date of hire to show early consistent results as a team. For every new hire this process becomes longer and more time till ROI.

This is often unpredictable, expensive, and difficult to retain as most entry level sales hires tend to move on from their jobs in less than 1 year, unless there is a considerable value add in terms of training, growth, income. In the possible scenario that the hires don’t perform, this cycle repeats and the time to ROI doubles.

The solution

Sales Development can be made predictable and minimal in risk by handing this part to external partners, who are experts in this, consistent in their efforts, have the right sales methodology and learn every day to tweak their sales process. One has to only figure out the best partner for them.

If a team is to do in house, this process involves subscribing to multiple sales tools inclusive of LinkedIn, data sources such as ZoomInfo/ Owler, Campaign tools such as Outreach / Yesware, Calendar tools, training, human resource, medical, infrastructure, email tracking tools and more. This is time, money, and resource intensive.

This is where Leadlytics works as an external but integral outbound sales development partner. We understand your business, customer persona(s), and generate warm leads for you from your TAM

We do this via emails and LinkedIn. Once we generate interest, we connect it to you or your team for final close.

Interested to know how we help you achieve 15-30X returns? Let’s meet.

I’m Nithin Samuel & I handle Partnerships & Sales @Leadlytics, the outbound sales development partner for B2B technology companies, helping achieve a wider opportunity pipeline, helping them focus, on closing more deals , and generating a ton of revenue.

Feel free to reach us if you have any thoughts or questions about outbound sales development or predictable revenue.

This article was originally posted in the Leadlytics Blog. Feel free to follow for more sales best practises