Every day, salespeople lose deals. Sometimes, it’s because of an unforced error, and other times it’s because the competitor created more value for the client. Sales leaders and sales managers also play a role in losses. Too many companies train their salespeople to focus on two points in the sales conversation: 1) The sales organization is safe, and 2) the solution is best in class and better than anything else on the market. When you couple this with a legacy approach in a fast evolving sales environment, you have a recipe for low win rates and lost deals.
When salespeople stack up losses, you have more than enough evidence that your sales force isn’t as effective as they need to be to succeed. You may have tried new technologies or changing the compensation plan with no improvement. At some point, you must address the question: How many deals are you willing to lose before you focus on sales effectiveness?
The Case for Sales Effectiveness
Let’s imagine you have 10 salespeople. The top two book more business than anyone else on the team, and sometimes, they are responsible for the lion’s share of net new revenue. This is evidence that you have an effectiveness problem. You can’t and shouldn’t allow the top 20 percent of your sales force to carry the entire team.
Most salespeople underperform because they are not effective in the sales conversation, the variable that determines whether a salesperson wins or loses deals. To maximize your results and reach your goals, you need to prioritize improving and increasing your team’s sales effectiveness.
The First Change for Effectiveness: Your Approach
The first change you need to make is to remove the legacy approach and replace it with one that provides your contacts with a better sales experience. Your company is exceptional, as is your competitor’s. Your solution is the world’s best, as is your competitor’s. When you and your competitors look and sound alike, it is no wonder your prospective clients treat you like a commodity. This problem is most common among sales teams that have retained the legacy approach, which contemporary buyers reject.
Tell your sales force that your company and your solution will not be enough to win clients, and that they must create value for the contacts and stakeholders they meet with.
The Second Change for Effectiveness: Consultative Sales
Your buyers and decision-makers need a better sales conversation, one that will help them make a good decision about their future results, so they need a salesperson who looks and feels like a business consultant. There are more than enough value-creation strategies you can use to wow your prospective clients.
The best way to improve your team’s effectiveness is to adopt a new B2B sales methodology built on helping the client by leading them through the sales conversation and buyer’s journey. The sooner you make the behavioral changes that will improve win rates, the sooner you’ll realize better results.
The Third Change for Effectiveness: Training
It is difficult to leave the cult of sales efficiency, especially if you have a giant sales tech stack. You must reduce your faith in technology and transfer your priorities to training, developing, and coaching your sales force.
It can be difficult to put your faith in sales training, especially if you are not aware of newer ways to train that require less time in training and more time practicing. (I can show you how.) As your team develops and their effectiveness grows, you will start to pull in the wins that you need, slower at first, then increasing in speed.
The Cost of Losses
Hate losing more than you love winning. The sales managers who want a pipeline that is eight times the quota don’t understand how sales works. More is only better if you can win the deals in your pipeline. Losing a great deal of opportunities is not a success plan for a sales organization.
It’s worth looking at what losses can do. They can sap the salesperson’s confidence and deprive them and their family of the money they need to take care of themselves. It also means your prospect didn’t get the better results you would have delivered, and your company lost the client and the revenue.
When a loss costs so much and harms so many, there is no reason to avoid making a change that would prevent losing so many deals with the high cost we pay for them.
If having more than enough opportunities doesn’t allow you to reach your goals, It is not a good strategy. If technology hasn’t lived up to its promise and helped you win more deals, you can exclude it as a path to better results.
The way to improve your sales results is to win more and larger deals. To pursue this path, you must build better salespeople. You want each person on your team to have a development plan that will improve their individual win rates. When your entire team’s win rate increases, so does the number of won deals.
There are too many people vying for your time, attention, and money, promising they know the silver bullet that makes it easier to win deals. The only path to high win rates is high effectiveness in the sales conversation. Spend your time and attention on training, developing, and coaching your sales force. The sooner you start to focus on improving your sales effectiveness, the sooner you will begin winning more deals and beating your competition for deals.
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