The Institute of Sales & Marketing Management (ISMM) recently published an article based on the 2014 UK Sales Skills Audit by SalesAssessment.com and the conclusion was surprising. It showed that most sales people demonstrated a lack of sales skills in some really important areas:
At the same time the ISMM published another article about why sales fail and a common thread was evident. Sales people focus on their own company, measures and why their product is great, more so than on the customers’ pains, needs and wishes.
A specific point to note is that it seems sales people seek to meet their measures (numbers of calls, meetings, and value of pipeline) in preference to focusing on really understanding their customers.
Don’t confuse the flapping of wings with forward motion.
So if you think your company’s sales-performance could be better, where do you start? How do you identify whether you have the right sales strategy, the right sales measures or your team has the right levels of skill?
Companies have come to us for sales training and sales consultncy to help them increase sales skills so that they can find and win more business faster. Before that happened we worked together on a Sales Process Review which highlighted where improvements could be made and their investments could be focussed on where the biggest returns were.
If you would like to find out more about how Sales Process Reviews could help your business, please click on link below, call us on 0191 481 3800.