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The huge cost of hesitation

April 30, 2007 in Call Reluctance, Prospecting, Sales Research, Sales Skills

I knew that being hesitant in the sales arena was a no-no, but I didn’t know just how much business it could cost.

From my experience, hesitating sales people miss out on about 15 new sales opportunities a month. People who do not hesitate to prospect or make contact with customers are five times more productive than their hesitant colleagues.

I find that most people in business hesitate to make contact with prospective buyers on a regular consistent basis, often leaving prospecting to chance. It is one of the biggest issues facing most businesses when it comes to making sales and staying viable.

If the average sales transaction is worth $800, the estimated income loss monthly of hesitation is $12,000, and the estimated income lost $144,000 a year.

Most people can recognise the immediate cost or lost opportunity of not making a sale, but what if hesitating is a ‘way of life’ in your business at the moment? It could be costing you a whole lot more, financially and emotionally. Here are some of the consequences of prolonged hesitation:

Financial cost of hesitation

  • No new sales revenue coming in.
  • Existing customer business drying up.
  • Losing customers to competitors.
  • Poor margins due to unnecessary discounting.
  • Not getting the business you should gave got.
  • Excessive complaints or returns due to over promising and under delivering.
  • Lost income.
  • Poor brand image.
  • Impaired recruitment.

Emotional cost of hesitation

  • Excessive worrying and anxiety about poor sales revenue results.
  • Doubt about doing this type of work.
  • Lack of sleep and exhaustion.
  • Self doubt about one’s ability to do anything.

You need to work out whether you have a culture of hesitation. Are any of these occurring in your business right now?

  • Making more excuses than sales.
  • Sitting there aggressively waiting for the phone to ring.
  • Wondering why sales aren’t coming in on a more regular basis.
  • Complaining about making cold calls.
  • Lacking confidence to pick up the phone and call or speak to people about your business.
  • Worrying that people might reject you.
  • Feeling ashamed about being in sales.
  • Don’t want to be seen as being too pushy.
  • Too busy doing other things then to sell but not making enough money.
  • Discounting prices all the time.
  • Doing coffee a lot but not making many sales.
  • Saying ‘yes’ when you should have said ‘no’.
  • Not standing up for the value of your business.
  • ‘Over servicing’, at a cost to you or your business.
  • Letting others take advantage of you at your expense.
  • Not asking for referrals.
  • Talking too much and not listening to your customers.

The good news is that hesitant behaviours and feelings you may experience are entirely learned and can by unlearned to help you self promote and make contact. This hesitation is not due to a lack of knowledge, skill, ability or talent.

Begin the journey

  • Become aware of your issues (what’s your pain in the stomach?).
  • Analyse where there is a problem (what’s causing the pain in the stomach?).
  • Admit you need to take responsibility (hardest one of all to be truthful).
  • Make a plan of new activities you need to do to be more proactive.
  • Seek the right help (you may need to talk to experts in this field about building a robust prospecting plan, getting an attitudinal shift to prospecting in your people/business, put in place the right skills training so you know how to prospect and what to say, have a culture review to see if you and your people are harbouring any negative views about selling that could be sabotaging your sales efforts, etc).
  • Take action and make changes.

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How not to make a prospecting call

April 23, 2007 in Prospecting, Sales Skills

I was working from home when the phone rang. No sooner had I finished getting the greeting out of my mouth than the distant monologue began.

I somehow worked out that the woman on the other end of the line was calling from a charity. At the 30-second mark I interrupted her and asked her what the purpose of her call was, but she did not respond and just kept going. Sound familiar?

At the one-minute mark I again interrupted, and asked her what the purpose of the call was. Guess what she said? “I’m getting to it love!” She wasn’t rude and her attitude was generally bright.

The reason for her failure to engage me from the outset was her management team. They set this woman and others like her up to fail in the first place. What were they thinking?

Why does this problem occur?

I’ve been selling for more than 20 years and have learnt many things by trial and error, common sense and staying aware of market conditions and how customers like to buy. There is no shortage of information out there about prospecting, sales, etc.

However, I am still amazed at how people don’t know how to prospect successfully, given the plethora of calls we receive at home in the evenings, with very much similar outcomes to my experience. So why do many businesses still get this part so wrong?

Many companies still adopt a “tell and sell” approach! Which is all about “LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME!” or the “Talking brochure syndrome”, with their call scripts structured around information that is all about their company and not centred on gaining an understanding of the customer.

Sales people are relegated to reading from a “one size fits all” script that leaves the customer feeling disengaged and disinterested. Surprise surprise!

  • Sadly most salespeople have never been taught how to make effective customer-focused, out-bound prospecting sales calls that take into account the situation and needs of the customer.
  • Many telesales consultants and direct sales people usually launch into telling the customer about their product/service without investigating whether or not the customer might have a genuine need for their product/service. This approach is outdated and doesn’t work anyway.
  • Their sales training is really only training in the product or service’s features and benefits, not in how to position themselves to investigate and understand customers’ needs from the customers’ perspective, and then being able to take that information and provide a relevant solution
  • Over 90% of telesales consultants and sales people have no formal solution sales process to follow (how can anyone learn to follow something that doesn’t exist?).

Here are some sales prospecting tips:

  • Establish what a viable prospect or contact looks like.
  • Determine who you are going to target.
  • Establish the purpose(s) of your call. These will vary depending on who you are calling, which can include; an existing customer, a lapsed customer, a referral lead, a cold call (contact off a list), a referral source, or other.

Make the call and state your name and your company.

Ask: “Do you have a moment to speak?” (Even if they say no, you can arrange another time to call back or the prospect can say no with the correct perspective, as they don’t have a need yet).

State the purpose of your call, which is positioned from the client’s perspective in language they understand (you’ve got 10 seconds to say it).

Let prospective customers make an informed decision about how to proceed with you.

Develop a script outline to guide you with targeted, tailored questions.

Set aside a block of time each day to make sales calls. Always follow up. JUST DO IT.

Sue Barrett, is founder and managing director of BARRETT Pty Ltd, an Australian based sales fitness firm. Author of ‘Sell Like a Woman’. winner of 1997 Telstra and Victorian Government Small Business Award.

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Professional Visitor or Professional Sales Person?

April 17, 2007 in Call Reluctance, Prospecting, Sales Skills

I am seeing a lot of time wasted by sales staff aimlessly chatting with clients.

How often are you left with the feeling that your sales people are seeing clients, but beyond the “hello” and general chat, nothing of substance is happening?

I call it the phenomenon of “professional visitation”.

Often the cause can be isolated to a sales person’s reticence to ask the “hard questions”. Preferring to operate at a more superficial level, there is little chance the sales person will ever become involved in negotiating their way through customer demands and price issues.

Contact time with customers should always be productive. It is not just us who are busy – so are our customers, and the last thing they want is an interruption to their day that does not yield results.

Have a look at this profile and ask yourself are you employing professional visitors?

  • Continual rounds of visits to clients they are comfortable to do business with.
  • Lengthy amounts of time spent establishing “rapport”.
  • Difficulty zeroing in on real customer problems rather than symptoms.
  • Inability to effectively negotiate the way around the “price” question.
  • Sticking to the “safe” but irrelevant topics.
  • Walking away with no advancement in the sales process.
  • Selling the same old products/services, not adding new ones.
  • Customers continually asking for more discount.
  • The customer controlling the sales process, not your representative.

Have you ever thought that if only half the effort was put into representing the company’s interests as well as the customers, there wouldn’t be this constant battle to provide more discount, more often?

The professional visitor hesitates to get into the fray with customers as they are not comfortable being assertive. The cost to you becomes more volume at the expense of profit, a failure to see opportunities with customers, and longer than necessary decision cycles. Are these costs that you can continue to carry?

If you have any of these people on staff, you have a problem. Have a look at some of my other postings for how to get them performing better.

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