It was never a path of roses. Sales teams always had challenges in their sales journeys. Post-COVID world has tested their patience and capability leaving them with new challenges and immense scope for improvement and creativity. Here, we have listed down some of the key challenges they are facing today and possible solutions to include in their sales process.
1. Building trust online and in the written format
Post COVID, more and more customers went into digital mode forcing sellers to choose the same. One of the biggest challenges in the digital world is developing a trustworthy relationship with potential customers via emails or video meetings or social connections on digital platforms.
- Emails – As per leading email marketing platforms, on an average an estimated 121 emails per day are delivered to the inbox of a standard office worker. Crafting an email that standouts, catches customer attention and draws response from them needs a greater degree of skill than ever.
- Video meetings – It is difficult to achieve complete attention without distraction from the prospect unless the prospect is in dire need of the product we sell.
- Social Presence in the absence of physical presence – Now, more and more sales people are building their social presence in digital platforms by updating their profiles or posting activity or following their customer posts and submitting likes, etc. These small deeds done rightly will have a greater impact on customer connections in the entire sales cycle.
Solution – Improve Writing, Listening & Presentation skills for digital format and mastering one’s identity and social connections. Some of the courses available in Udemy or Coursera can truly elevate your game in the digital world.
2. Keeping up with rapid growth and Digitalization
By the time the sales team completes studying the requirements and scope of a customer and preparing a proposal, there is a shift in customer’s business model or the customer was introduced to some new tech features and services by competition calling for re-writing the proposal or offer. The pace at which this is happening is faster than ever, bringing new challenges onto the table.
Solution - Sales people should pair their product knowledge with awareness and knowledge of the customer’s upscale strategy and an eagle’s eye on competition’s offer to prospects. Cross functional team collaboration within the sales organization is proving to be more and more important to achieve this goal.
3. Effective Lead Management
Nurturing leads in the right way starts with pitching the right solution at the right time, and to the right audience. “Richardson”, leading skills development company for sales people refers to the need of an efficient height and width approach towards lead management. In their ‘Selling challenges research study 2022 , it is highlighted that access to right stakeholders by keeping gate keepers away in the prospect company is a big challenge for many sales teams. Another challenge reported is lack of clear objection handling techniques that work repeatedly .
Solution – Connect with other sales people from a similar industry (of course not from a competition company), learn how they handle similar objections, and exchange knowledge on successful sales processes. If possible, exchange references with prospective customers. Salesguys platform is a good place for you to start this.
Brian Tracy says, “Treat objections as requests for further information”, it is a quicker and more efficient way to develop leads and understand the requirements of the customer from all sides of approaches.
4. Keeping up with competition and maintaining profit
While growth in the technology front has given the buyer as much information as the seller, it is observed to be getting more and more difficult to highlight the value factor and match up to the cost bargain. Price wars are more intense and negotiations run tougher. Meeting customers virtually and pitching products and services over email make it equally difficult to derive the value-cost equation and reach a reasonable closure.
5. Engaging multiple decision makers
With cost economies ruling the market, boundaries between job profiles of key people at client’s place too are getting broader in a bid to achieve best value for money before assigning the contract. As a result, Sales teams are forced to work with multiple stakeholders for a single deal. In some cases, the job profiles of stakeholders are becoming a blend of the technical and sales world. The broader the department of the person is, the more unique the objections raised will be.
Conclusion –
Being ready for learning new skills , adopting sales processes that give success consistently are a must for quick progress. Better and proven objection handling techniques are the life line during sales journeys. The moment the sales team is ready to redefine strategies and work harder on understanding the expanding business of the customer, they are moving towards the right track of handling objections and building the relationship with the customer, a step closer to closing the deal.
