Advice for Overcoming Obstacles in Sales
Advice for Overcoming Obstacles in Sales
Just like life itself, if you’ve been in sales for any length of time, overcoming certain obstacles is just part of the job, right? In this week’s Sales Brew, I will share a couple things from experience that can help you overcome obstacles more effectively.
Understanding Common Sales Obstacles
The big obstacle I see in working with organizations across the country are salespeople with a lack of a robust pipeline with solid, qualified opportunities. It’s the common denominator of many things that happen during the sales process, such as:
- If you have a strong, qualified pipeline you will be more apt to ask your prospects more questions, insightful questions, even tougher questions. You’ll do this because now you’re not desperate. Your psychological mindset needs to be, “I’d like to have this business, but I don’t need this business.” Don’t be desperate!
- A strong pipeline will also give you the confidence to “walk away” from opportunities early in your sales process. Getting caught in the trap of working on deals that are not qualified (and should never be in your pipeline) will play with our mind, waste a lot of your time and your company’s time and will cost you money.
Weak pipelines make cowards out of us all.
Another obstacle is the inability for a salesperson to “hang in there” with a prospect or client when the questions and objections start flying. Buyers of today are smarter than ever and well informed. Are you facing this challenge? If so, here’s some things you need to do:
- Complete a solid pre-call plan.
- What questions are you going to ask?
- What might their responses be?
- How will you then respond to subsequent questions?
- What curve-balls can they throw you? How will you respond?
- Practice and role play. By far, the most important aspect of having a great meeting with someone is to practice and role play the call. Practice how you will answer the questions in your pre-call plan. If you do this consistently, I promise you will find more compelling reasons why prospects should be considering you over their existing relationship. You will be more confident…and it will show.
So, the above can be summed up pretty easily:
- Have a sales pipeline with qualified opportunities that meet your ideal client profile, and…
- Practice and role play as much as you can. Get yourself in live situations as much as you possibly can to build confidence.
Make it a great rest of the week.
Dan Fischer
Sales Development Expert
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