Today, salespeople have an average of five of the 16 sales obstacles discovered. Five years ago there were three. In the early 2000s, there were only two obstacles that we needed to deal with. So we, as salespeople, find it increasingly difficult to maintain our productivity at the same time as the demand to initiate more contacts increases. Sales barriers are contagious, so if we don’t deal with them, it will spread, writes Christer B Jansson in this article.
The most common selling obstacle is still indecision; a fear/inner conflict of being perceived as too pushy, too much on, too argumentative, too “salesy” so you wait for the “right opportunity”. Some are certainly still waiting. Salespeople with indecision sell 50% in the same number of customer visits as a salesperson without the obstacle does.
We also see that only 15.4% of sellers worldwide have no problems with sales obstacles. This means that 84.6% of salespeople can improve their sales productivity, which should be very profitable. In the latest sales call reluctance book “Relentless”, Suzy Dudley and Trelitha Bryant wrote that American salespeople could sell 40-60% more if they did not have sales obstacles. Our data for Sweden says that we have exactly the same situation. In other words, if we address our sales barriers, we have great potential for improvement in any business.
Another exciting study we conducted is to look at the six different selling styles we found when we studied more than 300,000 salespeople and correlated their way of selling with two of our scales on the sales obstacle test; motivation and goal level. Roughly simplified, motivation is the energy I need to be able to do the job, i.e. can do and goal level is about wanting to do the job and having clear goals and a strategy to reach the goals.
Of the six different selling styles, it was found that salespeople who were extremely motivated and goal-oriented all had the same selling style. Which of these six styles do you think it is?
Needs-oriented selling style – asks questions to elicit the customer’s needs
Rapport-oriented selling style – builds rapport with the customer to show they care
Competitive selling style – focuses on closing to get the deal
Image-oriented selling style – to create a professional image
Product-oriented selling style – to showcase our product’s great features
Service-oriented sales style – to show how well I will take care of you as a customer
Those who had the most motivation and the highest goal focus were salespeople with a competitive sales style. I find this data thought provoking. Ultimately, sales is about getting a close, and the way to get there can be very variable depending on the situation.
What conclusions can we draw from this? The sales job and leading a sales organization will not be easier in the future. If we base ourselves on the facts, there is still a great potential to increase sales in most companies despite the times we are in. As long as our company managements dare to invest in their sales force and adequately give the salespeople the training and support they need. Just giving sales training will not help. Focusing on removing sales barriers, getting quality leads and even qualified leads would help many salespeople both prospect and sell better.
By: Christer B Jansson, CEO and founder of Confident Approach
