There are really only two problems that you ever have to fix with your sales force. The first is they're not prospecting for new business. The other is they're not closing deals in the pipeline that they should be closing. In other words, you either have a prospecting problem, or a selling problem.
But here's the bigger problem: when you have a prospecting problem, you probably don’t have enough in the pipeline to know if you have a selling problem.
I am shocked by how many companies don’t realize that they have a prospecting problem. This normally happens when their sales force is selling to existing clients for a large percentage of their time. If the pipeline is thin or non-existent—even if they tell you they are prospecting—they are not. So why don’t they prospect?
Here are some reasons:
- Their elevator pitch, 30-second commercial, or however they position the company or product in early conversations is not effective. When you use something over and over again and it never works, you tend to give up.
- They are prospecting too low in the organization. People who are low in an organization are typically focused on what they need to do for their job and not on the big picture. Not to mention, they're powerless to act. With all of this going on, they just resist the sales people. Resistance wears sales people out, and they stop prospecting.
- They don’t know who to call or who the ideal client is. They have no strategy behind their prospecting. They are not targeting new clients.
- They aren’t being managed or held accountable to their behavior.
- The have a fear of prospecting. (I have 50 different reasons for that, but that's for another post.)
- They aren’t motivated.
Basically, they don’t think that prospecting will work. If they did, they would be doing it.
If you are not getting enough new business to meet your goals, stop looking for fixes that aren’t centered around fixing prospecting problems. It really is that simple. If your people were prospecting effectively and regularly, the pipeline would be full.
