Facing challenges in sales no longer merits any further discussion. Sales in itself is a big mountain to conquer, especially for businesses struggling to close deals effectively. However, many business owners overlook that the first step to winning the sales race is acceptance.
Nope. Not the admission of defeat against the sales giants of your category. Rather, the recognition that sales challenges exist and you may not be handling them as a champ would.
Oh, you got rejection words in sales? A poser would slouch in failure and take it personally. A closer, on the other hand, would quickly rebuttal until the coveted “yes” is earned.
Oh, is the competition tight? A true closer would create demand for their solutions and will not compete by aimlessly lowering prices.
There will always be sales challenges, accept it. But keep in mind that a closer knows and a poser woes. This means that every salesperson has the chops to close more deals. The secret lies in knowing how to guide the dialogue towards that end.
That’s what we’re here to help you with.
When you cluster all the sales problems together, you’ll find that businesses face 11 general sales challenges. We’ll share with you what they are and how to overcome these sales challenges. Let’s keep reading.
What is the Most Challenging Part of Sales?
What is the Most Challenging Part of Sales?Sales is the lifeblood of any business. After all, without sales, there would be no revenue and without revenue, businesses would soon cease to exist. However, sales can also be one of the most challenging aspects of running an enterprise. This is because sales involve working with people– and people are notoriously difficult to predict and control.
Until now…
Recent studies have pointed out to inbound marketing being the future of business. That is, producing high-quality content and adding value to your customers’ lives is key to being the industry authority.
What does this entail for businesses?
This used-to-be notoriously difficult to predict and control bunch became predictable, and that made the sales process more complicated. People now have free access to all information they need on a business before a sales call. This poses sales difficulties as:
- 79 percent will choose businesses that consumers perceive as an authority.
- It will take more effort to break through a customer’s preconceived (and often, negative) notion of your business.
In other words, a hard sell of your solutions won’t cut it, even with flawless advertising. Instead, all your marketing fronts must be cohesive to soften customers up before you close the deal.
That said, the most challenging part of sales is that the sales process pervades every touchpoint of your business. Sales is present not only during the sales call but is involved throughout the entire system.
As a business owner, you want everything aligned in order to shatter all sales challenges little by little. Wizard of Sales® can help you develop the perfect, synchronous and cohesive marketing strategy that makes sales a lot smoother. Book a call.
11 Common Sales Challenges and How To Handle Them
1. Stiff Competition
There’s no business in existence today that doesn’t share in tight competitive markets. Having stiff competition is one of the biggest sales challenges of a business. The problem is that entrepreneurs are cognitively hard-wired to fall back to the same tactic when competitive markets are tight. That’s to lower prices.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s no issue with lowering prices as long as it’s strategic. However, going for the lowest low isn’t a smart approach to this sales challenge. Otherwise, you will leave your business gasping for air if you don’t make enough money for good cash flow.
The best approach is to create a perfectly fair competitive advantage. This means that you don’t lower prices, but craft an offensively huge value that justifies your asking price.
2. No Response From Prospects
Unresponsive prospects are another sales challenge for businesses, but there are ways to pinpoint the reason behind this:
First, you’re not doing a good job in generating the “good leads”. As a residential home service provider, your goal is to attract customers to choose your solutions. The thing is that customers in this market won’t purchase your service on a whim. You need to know the people who are actually in need of home services and target them with your messaging.
Second, your solutions are just not the right fit. It’s important to qualify your business from the client’s perspective to know if you’re a qualified service provider. Asking qualifying questions will help in this regard.
You will always find the right customer with the right problem, but the question is: “Are you the right solution?”
3. Inability to Deal With Rejection Properly
Rejection is a part of sales, but you need to have tough skin to make it through. The key is not to take it personally and to understand that it’s just a numbers game. If you always get thrown off by rejection, I’m afraid your sales strategy won’t get very far.
Nothing is worse than dealing with prospects’ fake politeness and indecision, at least with rejection you have an answer. It’s better if you can pull up a quick rebuttal to their rejection. If you can’t, you can always ask probing questions to see what would change their rejection into a “yes.”
Honestly, in sales, you need to make rejection your bitch.
4. Inadequate Selling Time
Sure, making a quick buck through direct-response marketing yields much-needed cash. However, that’s not a very sustainable strategy in the long run. Customers want businesses they can trust, and the secret is by building a customer-oriented relational experience (CORE).
This CORE concept envelopes everything from displaying empathy to demonstrating expertise to customers. All of this process takes time, and you have to invest that time for a more successful sales business.
5. Lack of Confidence in Sales
In a way, confidence is not necessarily the absence of fear but the presence of hope. Hope that you can go through a sales call and close the deal effectively. When you know the right words to say and the disposition to display, sales become much easier to accomplish.
Thankfully, we have that guide to help you skyrocket your sales confidence. The secret is to master the value you aim to provide customers. When you know how to satiate a customer’s pain points and soothe their pleasure points, sales confidence abounds. Confidence is the result, not the pre-requisite, of effective sales.
6. Sales Prospecting
Prospecting is the bread and butter of sales. It’s the process of finding new sales leads to market your product or service to. In a way, it’s also a numbers game.
The more sales leads you have, the more chances you have of closing a deal. However, that doesn’t mean that you should just shotgun your sales message to as many people as possible.
You need to be strategic about your sales prospecting and make sure you’re targeting the right leads. Otherwise, you’ll just be wasting your time (and theirs). Effective and targeted advertising reduces your chances of prospecting the wrong people.
7. Closing a Deal
7. Closing a DealOnce you’ve found a sales lead that you think is worth pursuing, it’s time to start working on closing the deal. This is where things can get tricky. You need to strike the right balance of being assertive without crossing the line into being pushy.
Closing deals means unearthing and addressing every defense mechanism a prospect throws at you. This includes:
- Complaints
- Lies
- Objections
- Stalls
- Excuses
- Rejection
You can do this by mastering Closing ARCs — a modern-day sales method using age-old communication principles. Learning the three fundamental elements of ARC: Agree, Rebuttal, and Close enables salespeople to manage every client objection. It ensures that sales reps maintain control of the sales call and guide customers to your desired purchase decision.
8. Multiple Decision-Makers
There are times when you’ll encounter multiple-decision makers that influence the outcome of the sale. Whether that’s family members or the bureaucratic system within an organization, multiple voices can confuse a prospect’s judgment.
The best way to deal with multiple decision-makers is by bringing them into the sales process as early as possible. This could be done in a group setting where everyone can voice their concerns. You can also schedule separate meetings with each decision-maker to address their concerns individually while building a relationship.
The goal is to get everyone on the same page and prevent another decision-maker from sabotaging the deal.
9. Gaining Trust
In the age of modern-day sales, the person who forges the strongest relationship secures the deal. This process takes time, and it’s a system that should pervade your business’s every touchpoint. From customer service to sales, everyone should be focused on creating and maintaining relationships.
Keep in mind that relationships are founded on trust. In other words, the business that proves most trustworthy is likely to produce meaningful relationships with clients. Understanding your prospects’ 3 underlying felt needs (money, energy, time) is the only way to etch your business’s reliability and authority.
It shows them that you know what you’re doing and you genuinely care about their needs.
10. Overcoming Objections
Objections come in many shapes and sizes. They could be stalls, lies and misdirections which are prospects’ final attempts to get out of a sales commitment. Sadly, many salespeople pale in the face of objection. When you let objections linger without addressing them, you lose the sale.
With each client you talk to, you will possibly encounter 1 out of the 6 objections in sales:
- No Urgency
- No Value
- No Confidence
- No Money
- No Agreement
- No Love
The real trick is reading between the lines and pinpointing the root cause behind their objection. When you address their objections with a well-timed, well-articulated rebuttal, you ease their minds into committing to the sale.
11. Proper Identification of Customer Pain Points
Underneath a prospect’s calm exterior is a pain point they want soothed or a pleasure point they want scratched. Prospects will not voice these things outright, and it falls on you to discover these buying motivations. Identifying their core pain points allows you to position your sales pitch and solution as their saving grace.
The best salespeople are excellent at active listening. They let the customer do most of the talking as they sift through the dialogue and read between the lines. That’s the secret to identifying pain or pleasure points, and then you attack from that angle.
Sales challenges are inevitable components of sales. You only achieve sales success when you learn to overcome every hurdle that’s thrown your way. Wizard of Sales® can help you prepare your salespeople to face and manage every sales challenge. It begins with booking a call.