Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
When some of your salespeople aren't closing sales of certain products or services what does it mean? First it helps to identify the possible causes:- are you losing sales to competitors?
- is your pricing strategy wrong?
- are your salespeople failing to sell value?
- are the wrong prospects being targeted?
- are the offerings being positioned incorrectly?
- are your salespeople doing something differently than before?
- are they asking the right questions?
- are they moving too quickly through the process?
- are they getting enough appointments?
- are salespeople ineffective at closing?
If you can answer yes to any of these questions, the next question has to be why? And don't feel bad if you can't answer the 'why' question. Most executives can't.
All too often, sales management identifies the problem too quickly - in this case they decide it is a closing problem - and determines that some skills training focusing on closing would be helpful. But so often, the problem they identify isn't the true cause and while the training can't hurt, it won't fix the problem.
Ask enough questions to get to the root cause. It's OK if you don't have the answers. Having the right questions can be more helpful than guessing at the answers. Once you have the questions, a sales force evaluation can provide the answers to all of your questions. To learn more about evaluating your sales force visit Objective Management Group's web site or Dave Kurlan's Lens.
(c) 2006 Objective Management Group, Inc.
