I’ve observed that sales confidence is one of the biggest challenges that sales professionals and sales leaders are facing with their sales calls, sales presentations and especially sales prospecting. It’s not just new sales professionals, it’s more of the tenured sales professionals who have 10 and 20+ years of sales experience. Why?
Three factors that sabotage sales confidence:
1. Buyers, customers, prospects just don’t see the value of a salesperson’s role, knowledge and ability to demonstrate value. They are quick to blow off meeting requests! They are not returning emails or voice mail messages and it takes many more touch points and different and stronger messaging to get their attention. When they do respond, they ask for the best price, and then involve more people in the decision-making process – lengthening a more challenging buyer cycle than ever before.
This can happen with existing and even favourite clients and can leave a sales professional feeling less confident, which certainly erodes sales confidence on the ability to reach out to secure business.
2. Sales professionals are more reactive and have little time for pro-active planning and strategies. When we are in reactive mode, we are fixing problems and following-up on customer orders. Sales Confidence is eroded when we are in fire-fighting mode. Sales professionals need to follow a proven sales process enabling them to be more proactive, than reactive. Sales professionals are not allocating the necessary time to be pro-active to find new customers. Sales preparation builds sales confidence.
3. Competition is fierce. Customers are more demanding, knowledgeable and do their research before they talk with a sales professional. Many sales professionals and sales leaders have not stepped up their A-Sales Game to be able to quickly and confidently articulate their company’s value proposition against their current competitor, how their products/services will provide better solutions to their prospects and customers and how to handle all types of objections from securing a meeting to securing a sale.
Sales confidence is one of the biggest challenges that sales professionals and sales leaders are facing with their sales calls, sales presentations and especially sales prospecting. Share on X
Three solutions to build sales confidence and create more confident sales professionals:
1. Practice, practice and more practice will build confidence. Sales leaders, like sports coaches, need to have their sales team practicing their introductions to secure a meeting, creating a value proposition that raises eyebrows and intrigues prospects to learn more, plus providing a purposeful consultative conversation framework that builds sales success. Rather than boring weekly and monthly team meetings, this is a great opportunity for sales teams of all levels of experience to get better at what they do to build confidence. There is also a great video coaching tool that will record your sales professionals’ sales calls and provide you with video reporting to quickly assess and get better.
2. Plan, plan and more planning will further build sales confidence. Start with three-year sales goals and asking yourself and your team – what are their sales goals in the next three years? This gets them to start thinking outside of their one year and 5-10% sales increases. Most sales professionals will share much bigger goals in the next three years, than sales leaders anticipate. Then, map out a plan to achieve these sales goals and be a stronger and more confident sales professional. For example, doubling your sales in the next three years, is a 26% sales increase each year for the next three years. It’s easier to achieve than you think.
3. Demanding buyers and organizations are looking for confident sales professionals who can problem-solve and bring valuable solutions that help improve their business and achieve their KPIs. They don’t want to have product and price conversations, they want purposeful business conversations by stronger sales professionals who will confidently help them grow their business.
Want to increase your sales confidence to grow your business and your customer’s business?Check out our new accredited sales training programs offered in 2019 here.
Give me a call at 519-863-3975 if you’re interested in understanding more about our accredited programs.
Lisa is driven by the mantra – Be Strategic. Be Pro-active. Be Brave. – and has been successfully training and coaching sales leaders and their teams to do the same for over 15 years. As the President of Teneo Results since 2003, she has trained thousands of sales professionals at more than 250 companies across North America. She transitions salespeople away from the standard “product & price” approach to having purposeful business conversations with their customers that drive results.