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Selling - Can Your Salespeople Actually Sell?
 If
your business employee a salesperson (or
salespeople) then obviously you expect them
to make sales; but new research shows that a
surprising number of UK salespeople struggle
with the most important part of their job!
Are your salespeople able to sell
effectively, and if not; what can you do
about it?
Sales performance specialists Silent Edge
benchmarked 1000 salespeople from various
businesses over a two year period. Each area
of the selling process was marked out a
maximum 100%; and the results, although not
all bad, are surprising:
Despite being smart, excellent at knowing
the products and services, and great at
establishing a rapport with the customer
(averaging over 83% in all of those areas);
UK salespeople have difficulty with closing
sales (46%), differentiating their business
from competitors (31%), and handling
objections (30%). However, UK salespeople
really struggle when it comes down to
negotiation skills (16%), and articulating
the value proposition (I.e.: Why should
potential customers choose you and your
products over your competitors) (15%).
With only one in every five potential deals
closed, a small improvement in the ability
of your sales staff could potentially bring
in big benefits; especially as the research
showed that a lot of the problems are down
to bad training rather than incompetent
staff.
Richard Ward of Silent Edge said:
“(Businesses) seem to labour under the
delusion that great salespeople are born,
not made. As a result, most sales training
adopts the ‘throw lots of mud against the
wall and hope some of it sticks’ format. The
so-called training is often not relevant to
the individual salesperson and does not take
into account his or her specific level of
competency. Nor does it motivate salespeople
to want to change their behaviour.”
Next time you look at training for your
sales staff, why not spend some time looking
at how you can use it to get the most from
your salespeople. Find out the areas that
they need to improve upon, and ask them what
areas they would like to train in; you might
find that they already know where they can
improve!
Read more about improving your salespeople
in our Marketing and Sales portal.
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