Top 3 Sales Challenges to Boost Your Success

Last week, someone asked me: From your experience, what are the top 3 challenges a salesperson should overcome to sell more?

That is a good question. Why? From what I have seen in the field and on the floor, Sales Frontline is overwhelmed with priorities, tasks, to-do lists, follow-up actions, and, oh yes, please… don’t forget… to sell! So, although sales executives have been trained to sell with the buyer’s perspective, distractions often get in the way. A focus on a One-Two-Three would help. HERE ARE MY 1-2-3 challenges to boost your sales success:

1. First, Create Value, then Add Value

What does that mean?

When adding value, you share knowledge the customer appreciates, enriching their understanding of how things work. Buyers have completed their buying process for 60% before they involve Salespeople. In other words, they have determined online what products and solutions you and your competitors offer. When meeting with you, they have questions about these and expect you, as a product and solution expert, to explain more details. Great! You have satisfied your customer And have ADDED value. However, these types of meetings often put you in a difficult position because now your customer understands how your solution works, and you automatically become part of an Excel spreadsheet and are compared to what pricing your competitors offer.

This way of selling should be avoided. It is also not what mainstream buyers nowadays want from Salespeople. What do they want? They want you to CREATE value. They want to know if you have any information they haven’t and if you could change their perspective on advancing their business. When customers are still doubting what growth strategy to focus on, you should help them make better strategic decisions. CREATE value by sharing your business growth ideas backed up by third-party research. This requires the skills and mindset of a Trusted Advisor.

2. Stop Talking about your Solution and Company

I know this sounds so weird. You are a salesperson, right? Of course, you want to talk about your solution and company! But talking about your solution and company too early would, first of all, bore your customer, and second, you are skipping a critical part of the Selling with the Buyer’s Perspective sales process:

Once your customer is interested in your business idea you need to let them discover what solution criteria are needed to make your idea work and drive growth.

Then, they realize their current set-up has solution gaps, and you are there to help supply these solutions. Now, you are ready for a Change to Who conversation. Who is best positioned and offers the capabilities that fit the needed solution criteria? You!

3. Get Strategic by Involving more Stakeholders

The third challenge also sounds simple, right? But it isn’t. If you already have two or more stakeholders at your first, Why Change? meeting, then that is a bonus. You can change all of their perspectives. However, the reality is that most of the time, your meetings are with your current contact at the customer organisation. They are most likely in your line of business (logistics, product development, warehousing, IT purchasing, etc.). They are responsible for meeting their KPIs, and these are mostly tactical. Hence, they always want to compare your capabilities to those of your competitors.

The moment you invite owners, senior directors, or executives to your meeting, the conversation changes. They are interested in whether your business growth ideas impact their top or/and bottom line. They are seeking strategic advantages and want to know if you can help.

So, enable middle management to influence senior management. Make them your Change Champion. What if, after you have left the building, your stakeholder bumped during the lunch break into another critical stakeholder? How well have you equipped your Change Champion to influence others? Your ideas and insights must be factful, concise, and easy to remember. Your value-framing contains:

• Your customer’s desired objective
• Their challenge
• The solution
• The outcome

They need a clear idea of your proposed change and the solution required to achieve the outcome. Most of the buying is done when you are not there.

But this is still not enough. It would be best to empower the receiver to give another stakeholder the quickest access to the insight, research article, or data you base your business idea on. This is called Digital Enabling. Then, they are armed with valuable material they will forward to another stakeholder together with your Value-Framing.

Conclusion

If you want to sell more, you need to focus on these three challenges and get better every day. Ask your manager to coach you on these. What are you doing well, and what could you do to improve at the next customer meeting? Trusted Advisors are strategic thinkers. They create value, stop talking about their products and solutions until the customer is ready, and cover the bigger buying room to move opportunities forward.

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