Back in 2020, for a bit of fun, I ran the World Cup of Sales Problems, to try to find the biggest problem sales people had, based on the ideas of my LinkedIn connections. You can read about it here: https://www.hoolock-consulting.com/blog/world-cup-of-sales-problems
As the current football world up is ongoing, I thought that it would be interesting to see if anything had changed and to determine the biggest problem just now. Over a week, I posted 4 different polls asking people to vote for which of the problems they thought was the most significant. As much as possible, the problems related to the same part of the sales process.
Match 1:
Sales people have no systematic process for finding new leads (43%)
vs
All opportunities are chased regardless of value (57%)
A close vote and possibly a surprising result for me as most people that I talk to have no systematic process.
Match 2:
Sales people have no way of recognising a good customer (0%)
vs
Sales people do not talk to the right people in their target customer (100%)
An overwhelming win for not talking to the right people.
Match 3
Sales people do not ask very good questions when meeting the customer (27%)
vs
Sales people just talk about themselves and their product (73%)
These are somewhat opposites but a clear win for talking too much about their own product.
Match 4
Sales people do not provide their customer with a reason to change (50%)
vs
Sales people do not understand why their product is unique (50%)
The first time that there has been a draw so I got to cast the deciding vote and chose no reason to change. This was the overall winner in 2020 and is still, to my mind, the biggest issue faced by sales people.
So, on to the semi-finals:
Semi-final 1
Sales people do not talk to the right people in their target customer (77%)
vs
All opportunities are chased regardless of value (23%)
A fairly clear win for not talking to the right people in their target customer.
Semi-Final 2
Sales people do not provide their customer with a reason to change (25%)
vs
Sales people just talk about themselves and their product (75%)
This was a bit of a surprise to me but talking about themselves and their product came out a clear winner.
The Final!!
The final poll has just finished as follows
Sales people do not talk to the right people in their target customer (60%)
vs
Sales people just talk about themselves and their product (40%)
A clear winner and the problem that most people think is most significant is that sales people do not talk the right people. It is certainly true that we tend to talk to people that we are comfortable talking to or who we know and like. However, talking to the right people can be very difficult as they are often shielded from us by others.
It is interesting that “talking” was part of both finalists as so many people are given sales roles “because they are a good talker”. This has never been a great criteria for me as they often talk too much about themselves and their product and do not listen to the customer. We need to appoint people who are curious into sales roles because they will ask great questions.
If you would like to discuss whether you are talking to the right people or not, please get in touch!