Tell me, ever hear a salesperson say something like this: “Just had a great meeting. I think there is going to be $100,000 (or $10,000 or $1MM) of business there!”
Yet somehow that great meeting never turns into any business. Well, you are not alone and as a sales leader I have some ideas to help you help your sales team.
The Cause:
Salespeople are generally optimistic in nature. Which is great, except when it clouds their ability to be objective and emotionally neutral.
Here’s what I mean. About 63% of all salespeople suffer from a lack of emotional discipline*. They get excited in a sales conversation when there is some positive response from the prospect or customer. They make assumptions about what the prospect meant, what the prospect’s intentions are and what is going to happen next.
And guess what? They fail to focus on the prospect as intently as they should. They don’t ask the next logical question. They accept what the prospect said on face value and draw their own conclusions. Then they believe the sale is all but closed.
The underlying cause is the salesperson’s inability to maintain emotional control.
And poof. It evaporates, but it still sits in the pipeline. It still swirls around in the salesperson’s head. They believe it is going to close so it makes them less inspired to prospect because they’ve got this one in their back pocket. Their pipeline stalls. They fall behind the sales plan. The sales manager gets stressed, and unhappiness abounds.
It is a vicious cycle. You see the symptoms of this problem, but the underlying cause is sometimes not so obvious. It is their inability to maintain emotional control.
These three items are essential to help close more business generally but are crucial to help salespeople who suffer from a lack of emotional control execute. Without these tools in place, those salespeople who might not naturally be able to stay in the moment will wander, waste time with the wrong opportunities, and miss out on closing business.
* Statistics courtesy of Objective Management Group
Gretchen Gordon is the CEO of Boost Profits, a consulting firm specializing in sales team transformation. A self-proclaimed “Sales Nerd” with over 27 years of sales, sales leadership, and sales team transformation experience, she spends most of her time working directly with client companies and helping them improve their sales effectiveness and exceed their sales goals. Gretchen is also a frequent guest speaker for industry events and webcasts, and has been featured on the radio talk shows “Meet the Sales Experts” and "Sales Coaching over Coffee." She is also an accomplished writer, having been featured on industry-leading sites like SellingPower.com and SecurityInfoWatch.com. She authors a “Top 50 Sales Management Blog,” according to Docurated.com, and has published sales-focused eBooks, including “The 5 Essentials of Effective Sales Management” and “Cold Calling in the 21st Century.”
Find out more about Gretchen Gordon on LinkedIn
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