Why As much as 80 Percent of companies and businesses underperform in selling and sales, sales training, sales performance and Results

When started as a consultant years ago, I was very na?ve and ignorant about how things in consulting and in business work. I had read many books and articles in consulting including the challenges and what one needs to do to be successful. For a reason I understood later, I was not as successful as I wanted quickly. I had some good knowledge about what to do but for some reason, I just did not do it. Besides knowledge, when I started I had an rough idea of what I wanted to do and how to do it. I latter realised that my reference, the books that I had read, were written in Europe and America and related more to those areas than to Africa. Being honest, I was then very convinced that Africa, Europe and America were the same and whatever applied to Europe and America applied to Zimbabwe and Africa. This belief cost me a lot of early success.

Now, when you read books, you also think other people in your category also read the books and practice what they read. For example, many business, leadership and management books talk about things like emotional intelligence, empathy, integrity and how they are crucial for long term success. So at times you become so na?ve that you think all business people, leaders and managers also learn the same things and act in accordance to what they learn. I can a whole on this.

Although I was very clear that to succeed in consulting, as in any other business, you have to market and sell, I struggled with sales and selling. Marketing itself was not a big deal for me because I have a natural interest in marketing as a subject since I was still in high school. It was not like wanting to be a career marketer as such but I had a natural curiosity to understand the subject and how it works. My real problem was in how to sell. I had books and other materials on sales and selling and I was listening to many sales and selling experts with great ideas and proven methods to become great at sales and selling, but it seems like I found it easier to share that will others but I was not using the same as effectively on my own consulting. I latter realised that I was trying to use my own instincts instead of using psychology-based or evidence-based or proven approaches to sales and selling success.

I thought instinctively the best way to sell was to simply have a large email database and broad cast my message and my solutions and services. I was starting a consulting business without any substantial amount of money to use for marketing. In those days, newspaper, television and radio were the best and most effective platforms for marketing and advertising. The same also cost a lot of money and inefficient because of very little marketplace residence time. Marketplace residence time is the time your message remains in the market after introducing it. For example, with hard copy daily newspaper adverts, the effective residence time would be as little as eight hours after the newspaper has been published. Few people read old newspapers. Add to that the placing of your message in the newspaper, print and distribution and things become complicated and less effective. With radio, the residence time if even shorted. A broad cast lasts seconds; people are tuned in and hear your message or they miss it completely unless it is repeated latter.

Over the years, I have learnt a lot about sales and selling including the following.

Sales is very important in business and in life, but it seems many leaders in business and the corporate world, including many heads of sales and marketing, are yet to fully accept this reality and pay as much attention to the subject as they should.

Many Chief Executive Officers do not have a good knowledge of what sales is all about and what they must know about sales and selling. Yes, sales in many organisations is led either by the head of sales, or sales director or sales manager, but if the Chief Executive Officer and the Head of Finance do not know what they must know about sales and selling, they will struggle to provide great oversight over the sales function and to provide their best possible support to the head of sales and the sales team. I call this the knowledge asymmetry problem.

In summary, many companies and businesses around the world underperform in the area of sales and selling. This underperformance exists even in many companies that dominate others in sales in their industries.

For more details of the reasons why sales and selling performance is below potential click the link below.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/your-business-company-grossly-underperforming-sales-selling-here-sat6f/