Confronting the Hard Truth: Why Salespeople Miss Their Targets: 3 Main Reasons Are The Opportunities

Are you tired of missing your sales targets despite endless hours of training? It's time to face the truth and confront the real reasons behind your shortcomings. In a brutally candid conversation, I expose the harsh realities of the sales profession that I have personally experienced over my 31-year journey. This episode promises to offer a fresh perspective on why salespeople fail to meet their sales numbers, and it's not about the external circumstances we often blame.

We shed light on the three critical elements that most sales representatives overlook - reality, self-awareness, and practice. I share fascinating insights on how practicing the art of sales, cultivating self-awareness, and dealing with reality can significantly boost your sales performance. The episode also delves into the role of CRM systems and the resistance sales reps often show in acknowledging their flaws. You're in for a wake-up call, so get ready to question the status quo and explore the unvarnished truth about sales.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

For 31 years I've owned this company, progress Coaching, and I don't share this a lot with people. Yet I would share with you something very interesting. When we started out, we started out as a company called Sale Builder Marketing, where we were going to train salespeople to work with marketing departments and vice versa, and then we really transitioned into a coaching company a few years after that. Now I'm going to be very candid and I want to say this from a place of caring Salespeople have a tough. I'm a salesperson, I have to sell. To be candid, if I didn't have to do it, I'd probably be happier. I don't think it's a necessary evil. I like it, I don't love it. So I have a deep appreciation for what salespeople go through. How many people take a job knowing they're going to have rejection? Very few people do, yet salespeople do. Here's the funny thing about salespeople we have had sales training for years, yet the numbers continue to be flat. Roughly one out of every two people either hit or do not hit their quotas, and what happens is we come up with all these reasons why. It's objection handling or we got to put in a CRM. I believe there are three reasons why salespeople do not hit their numbers and it's tough. This is going to feel like scratching a chalkboard for some people to listen to. A salesperson hearing this will probably be offended. That's okay, I'm a salesperson. I had to go through this.

Speaker 1: 2:14

We all go through different iterations of becoming a really good sales professional. Number one is reality, being honest with reality. Let me be really crass. I'm talking to a salesperson right now. Hypothetically, you did not win the business because you were not effective. You talked too much, you didn't handle objections, you interrupted, you didn't drive benefits. That really precipitated them to really understand that their buying drivers were going to be met as a customer. You failed. Now that sounds harsh and I know it does. See, when sales are up, sales reps typically say look at me, I had a great year. When sales are down, wow, the market, the market went south, the industry is down, the economy is bad, no Good, and great salespeople sell during tough times. That's what differentiates them. We have to be honest and deal with reality.

Speaker 1: 3:15

The subset of reality is self-awareness, the ability to look in the mirror and say here's where I'm a great salesperson, here's where I have opportunities to improve, which leads to the third area practice I am so sick and tired of hearing people. I hate to role play, then don't. But please don't tell me that your skills magically, arbitrarily go up because you need them to Think about that. People don't practice their craft. Think about athletes. Think if we had a league of professional teams, no matter the sport, and nobody practiced, would we watch? There is an art, there is a craft to practicing. You have to practice.

Speaker 1: 4:09

You know, I always love this when I do public speaking and I work with sales organizations and I say forget that you're in sales, forget that you're a salesperson. Let's be really honest with ourselves. What do we hate about people when they sell us? Everybody says it. We talk too much. Right, you know we hear the 80, 20, 70, 30 rule. You know we should be listening 70 to 80% of the time. Yet we don't do that. We're creatures of habit. We have been training people on needs-based selling and active listening for three, four, five, six decades. It doesn't improve Now.

Speaker 1: 4:46

When you ask somebody and you go into an organization where there's veterans and you ask them to talk about or to uncover if you will needs through open-ended questions, you typically see the rolling of the eyes. I know what this is. See, there are three tiers to development Knowledge, skill and behavior. Knowledge do they know how to ask an open-ended question? Typically, the answer is yes. Still. Have they practiced it? Few do. Behaviorally, what do we do? We pigeonhole ourselves. You happy with your current provider? Yep. Would you be open to looking at another solution? Nope. And so, when we look at these things, there are three primary reasons your sales organizations do not have the success that they need to Reality, self-awareness and practice. Here's the funny thing. A lot of times, companies will spend an enormous amount of money on CRM systems. I'm not against CRMs, by the way. Yet the CRM is typically at the mercy of what the rep is going to share.

Speaker 1: 5:52

Now I want to share something with you, as I'm doing this podcast episode and writing this article on LinkedIn. I just went to 10 sales reps and I did a little experiment across organizations and industry. When I asked all 10 people, I said would you mind if I asked you a really weird question? And there was a little bit of a setup, a little bit of a curveball. I said give me two deals that you've worked on, one that you won, and why did you win it. And number two, give me a deal that you lost and why did you lose it?

Speaker 1: 6:22

Now, there were varying reasons why they won their business Now. Number two out of 10 people not one rep indicated they were ineffective. It was always extenuating circumstances such as well. I just don't think they had the budget or they're going to stay with their current provider. They weren't really interested in changing and right now they're kind of in a holding pattern or we were too expensive. Not one of them brought up their inability to sell and close the deal. Not one of them. If people deal with reality, they'll be more accurate. When people become more self aware, they position themselves to develop and professionally pursue sales performance improvement. Number three if you are a sales leader and you are not scheduling practice sessions, shame on you. Your people are not getting better. Looking at numbers, looking at forecasts, looking at the funnel will never improve someone's ability to overcome a competitor price objection unless they practice it. If you're intrigued, ask us about the sales coaching loop. Not only does it help you uncover reality and drive self awareness, we position you to coach to reality and self awareness.