Top 5 Reasons Salespeople Fail

by Jeff Bloomfield Follow @jeff_Bloomfield

Let's begin by addressing the large, subconsciously resistant elephant in the corner of your hippocampus. We are ALL salespeople. Every one of us. Sales is merely a subset of influence and influence is what we, as human beings are attempting to do every time our mouths are moving. Agreed? Great. Now we can address the subject at hand. I have worked with, managed or trained thousands of sales people over the course of my career and there are FIVE key areas that tend to continually steer the proverbial salesperson's ship onto the rocks.

1. No Purpose

You may have heard the adage; people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it. In fact, author Simon Sinek wrote an entire book around this subject called "Start With Why." The concept of purpose has almost been overused and become part of the new realm of cliche thanks to all the self help books created over the past two decades. The realty is, however, that once you wade through the "7 steps to a new you" and the "Path to discovering your inner self" books, the truth still remains. You must understand and define your "why". The problem salespeople find is that they try to convey "what" they sell and "how" their company is better than another. Eventually, the repeated rejection leads to disillusionment with their company and themselves. So, they change jobs every 3-5 years and repeat the cycle.

Solution

Become the type of person that has their own vision and purpose. Your own "why". How do you do this? Take thirty minutes today and write your "My Why" statement. List out the 3-4 things that you "believe" about your world. I'm not talking about politics or religion necessarily, rather universal beliefs that guide you every day. Next, think about where you learned them from and craft a story around those people in your life who taught you these beliefs. Finally, start operating every day with every person you meet from a place and foundation of your "why". In our seminars, we help people create very powerful "My Why" statements and start to use them as 90 second introductions when they are on sales calls. It's amazingly powerful and leads people to a new place of not only sales success, but personal satisfaction. You may be working for a company, but you're really working for yourself now. It won't matter what you sell because why you do what you do will be your new driver.

2. Wrong Attitude

I'm sure you've heard "your attitude determines our altitude". It may sound a bit cheesy but it sure is true. Sales is hard. Day after day, call after call with four out of every five people telling you no. It can really suck the life out of a person. I once had a basketball coach who always said, "I can't coach height and I can't coach attitude. You bring both those into the gym with you. You can't change your height but you can determine your attitude." Great wisdom for all of us, huh? When you wake up in the morning, what's your attitude? Why is that your particular attitude? Are you a positive person who others are attracted to being around or are you an "air sucker"? Air suckers are those people who just seem to suck all the positive H2O right out of the room. Just yesterday I reminded my nine year old son of my favorite Henry Ford quote. "Whether you think you can or you can't, you're right." I won't get into the law of attraction and the belief thereof, but needless to say, you will attract what you give off.

Solution

When you've mastered your "My Why" purpose statement, you will be well on your way to creating a positive attitude every day because you are no longer allowing your circumstance to dictate and define your self worth. Releasing that pressure actually reduces your cortisol level and allows you to operate from a place of your own personal truth and peace. That may sound a little Dr. Philish, but that doesn't mean it's not true. Another simple step is to list off the top five things you are thankful for every morning when you wake up. It will program your brain for the day and set the tone for your purpose. Attitude in sales is really about feeling confident in who you are first, followed by what you can do to help someone else solve problems. Just be cautious not to let pride get the best of your best intentions! It's a balance.

3. Lack of Preparation

If I told you we were going on vacation what would be your next question? Of course you would ask, "where are we going?" What if next, I told you we were going to Disney World followed by three days at the beach and that I would provide $5,000 but I needed you to plan the trip for us, what would you do? You would immediately start researching and planning the trip. From travel arrangements to hotel accommodations, from meals to other adventures we might do while on the trip, you would likely plan every detail so we could have the most enjoyable trip for the best overall price. It doesn't take a genius to see where this analogy is going, huh? As salespeople, we tend to just show up and throw up our data points all over the customer and then we are shocked that they say "NO." Preparation is not just about looking up the prospect on Linkedin, though that certainly has it's place. It actually starts much, much earlier.

Solution

Preparation starts with knowledge. How well do you know and understand your company's offerings? How well do you know and understand your customer's industry? How about their main issues? How "knowledgeable" are you in general? Next, how well do you use your sales process to determine the best qualified prospects? Are you what we call around here a "Zoo Chimp" sales person? Where you sit in your cage and throw crap at the wall to see what sticks? Let's hope not! Spending your time on qualified prospects is instrumental in improving sales success. The right sales "behaviors" are born out of Knowledge + Attitude + Skill. The right behaviors demonstrated over time lead to great sales "Habits". Part of this equation leads us to #4.

4. Poor Sales Communication Skills

We now know and understand through neuroscience that people buy from people and brands they "trust" and they trust those whom they like and connect with. That trust is the ticket into the arena to then help them solve their problem with your solution. The vast majority of sales people spend little to no time truly "connecting" and by connecting, I mean communicating your "why" and asking the customer for their "why". Instead, we launch into a diatribe of facts and figures, features and benefits with no foundation of trust. This communication style is processed by the area of the customer's brain that makes them "think" instead of "feel" and is also the part of the brain that is skeptical and judgmental. We do this as sales people for two reasons. One, we have been incorrectly trained this way. Two, we are on our own agenda rather than the customer's. We are trying to meet quota and drive results rather than understand, listen and solve problems.

Solution

The solution is simple, just not easy. You must re-train yourself to communicate in such a way that speaks to the "buying brain" of your customer. You have to ensure you have personal trust and connection FIRST, then uncover through intentional questioning what issues the prospect is actually trying to solve and most importantly, what the COST of not solving those issues is to your prospect. Then you can begin to establish professional trust by communicating your company's credibility and finally, you can help them solve their problem with your solution. Notice anything different with this order? It's backwards from what most sales people do. They begin by trying to solve "a" problem that fits what they are selling without having established personal trust, professional credibility or truly understanding the prospects actual problems. The order matters. Trust me.

5. Lack of Follow Through

For most companies, the sales process is complicated. In fact, in most cases, it's too complicated. Sales people tend to fail in one of two areas here. First is when they don't actually get the business in the face to face meeting due to more information the prospect needs. They have genuine interest but need you to provide more info. etc... It never ceases to amaze me to see how many times a salesperson either doesn't do what they said they would do or takes way to long to do it and as expected, loses the sale. The second problem area here is once a sales person has their targets, does their research and actually gets a prospect to say yes to their solution. The average to below average sales person will then give themselves a nice metaphorical slap on the back and fist bump and throw the sale over the wall to be handled by someone else in their company. The implementation gets botched somewhere in the convoluted delivery chain and the customer cancels the order. All the hard work you put in is lost and of course, your attitude shifts to blaming the delivery team. How could they have ruined your sale?

Solution

In a nutshell, do what you say you're going to do!!! It sounds like such common sense but as we are seeing in nearly all aspects of culture, common sense isn't so common anymore. Ineffective salespeople tend to live for the moment and over-promise and under-deliver. It takes discipline and a purposeful process to avoid this common pitfall. Take copious notes on every sales engagement and always allow time at the end of EVERY day to review your notes and create an action plan that provides executable steps to delivering whatever it is you said you would deliver to your customer and a way to measure by when. If it's information you owe them, get it to them in under 24 hours. If it's an order to be processed by your delivery team, set up a communication schedule to where you will be kept in the loop with every touch point and milestone of implementation. You are the trusted advisor to your customer. If things go wrong, they don't care who messed up on the delivery side. You are the one who sold them the solution. It's on you to see it through.

There are obviously many other reasons why salespeople tend to fail but eliminating these five mistakes will turn nearly any mediocre salesperson's career around. I've seen it happen time and time again.

Question: What areas do you see salespeople struggle with the most?

About the Author:

Jeff Bloomfield is the Co-Founder of BrainTrust, a sales and marketing consultancy that teaches companies how to leverage neuroscience in their overall sales and marketing message strategy.

BrainTrust: www.braintrust101.com

Get Jeff's book, Story Based Selling