Having good salespeople in your business is one way to leverage the profit potential of any business. In most cases the business owner is the best salesperson in the business. He or she knows all the specifics of their products and services and clearly understands how to properly assist a prospect into becoming a valued customer.
However, as the business begins to grow the business owner no longer has to spend more of their time in running other aspects of the business. The logical next step is to hire a salesperson(s) to help keep the business coming in while allowing the business owner
Nevertheless, I often hear from business owners how frustrating it is to find salespeople who can really sell. They tell me that they are finding a lot of salespeople who are nothing more than order takers.
In other words, all they can do is simply take the order from a prospect. Then, at the very first sign of resistance from the prospect they are quick to say goodbye and go back to waiting for the next prospect.
Alternatively, these business owners find salespeople who just irritate customers by "data dumping" or using old manipulating sales techniques. In the end the prospects want nothing to do with the business or the salesperson.
You can see why these business owners would be sitting back scratching their heads wondering what these so called, "salespeople" are really doing? What is the point of having a salesperson if all they do is fill out order forms or lose them business?
Not all salespeople are created equally
It is important to understand that just because an individual has had many years of experience as a salesperson that this does not mean they can sell.
In a recent recruitment of salespeople some applicants were able to produce impressive numbers and even awards for high sales productions. What I noticed is that a lot of these were dated during boom times. So, what may have worked in the past is no longer valid today.
What is behind the different selling environment
Today, customers and prospects for any kind of product or service, are concern about getting value for their money. Selling today is not just about educating the customer. Customer and prospects alike these days first gather information about the products and services they are interested in well before they ever talk to a salesperson.
The last thing most prospects want is a salesperson who does nothing more than just dump data about the product, company, or even themselves.
There are two types of salespeople
As we discussed above there are a number of order takers pretending to be salespeople and now looking for work. Some of the recent applicants demonstrated a good command of all the buzz words. They clearly showed how they have memorized a series of sales tactics and strategies, but when we go deep into the discussion I find that they don’t really understand the sales process.
Sure, many of them have read some of the top sales books and even attended some of the very best sales training seminars. Yet, I constantly noticed how these salespeople bleed through leads and prospects with little or no results to show for their efforts.
The common denominator why these salespeople can’t produce is always external to them. So, this is why they are barely producing anything and are looking around for a new position before their current employer decides to terminate them.
What all this means is that there are salespeople out there who are truly sales professionals and there are still a large number of individuals who thought they were sales professionals. The key for any business seeking to hire salespeople is to be able to distinguish among the order takers and the real salespeople.
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