- September 24, 2012
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Why do salespeople get more excited about big sales opportunities than they do about strong sales opportunities? I don’t know about you, but I get much more excited about an opportunity which has a strong likelihood of closing than a big one that at best has less than a 50% chance. What about you?
Salespeople are generally too optimistic and not skeptical enough about what they are hearing. Objective Management Group’s (OMG) statistics, on more than 600,000 salespeople who’ve been assessed, show that 86% of them are too trusting of what people tell them. This affects their ability to recognize put-offs like, “Sounds good. Call us next week.” More often than not, a prospect says those things to end a call or meeting with no intention of buying (especially next week!) Yet equally often, the salesperson hears something completely different, like, “I’m going to close this next week!” And of course, that leads to them getting excited about a closing opportunity, it goes into the forecast, and then it fails to materialize.
