Peady’s Selling Engagement sponsored by IRD Prospector

Welcome to this week’s post on sales and selling success.

Whenever I conduct a sales training workshop one of my first set-up questions is to ask attendees “what are your main selling skill challenges”? I really don’t know why I bother because I can write the list on a whiteboard, before they tell me – and I’m not physic!

• Handling objections
• Time management
• Prospecting and qualifying
• Closing / Gaining a commitment
• Negotiating

And that’s generally the correct order too.

Why?

How come so many salespeople say their top two skill challenges are handling objections and time management? Interestingly, sales managers rarely list them as the top skill gaps for their people.

Objections

I don’t believe “objections” is the problem – it’s that salespeople lack strong sales knowledge, preparation and confidence to handle a difficult selling situation. Objections don’t really exist, they are reflex responses used by customers to cover the real situation. At least 90% of the time when someone says, “let me think about it” they are saying something else.

So, maybe the solution is more training on call preparation and asking great questions to uncover what that “something else” is?

Time management

Fact: salespeople who spend every available minute of the selling day focussing on high value activities will rise to the top of the heap (the opposite applies to those who spend too much time on low value / no value activities).

There are plenty of time management “tools” and they are important to maximise time, however read any list of time management tips for salespeople and right at the top is eliminate non-essential (or time wasting) tasks.

Maybe the training should focus on identifying the key high value selling tasks with strong ROI and minimising time spent on the wrong areas?

Do you agree with what I’ve said about objections and time management? Maybe it could be a great talking point in your next sales meeting? I’d love to hear your feedback.
Until next week good selling! 
 

About the author 

Stephen Pead is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management. He is based in Sydney and specialises in helping SME’s market their businesses more effectively and providing training for salespeople and sales managers.

He can be contacted at [email protected]