1. Leaking Sales Pipeline
How visible is your sales pipeline? Do you know what is in the pipeline and where and why potential sales are leaking out as lost opportunities? In simple terms if you cannot see and understand the problem you won’t be able to fix it. If you can see and understand your sales pipeline and where it is leaking, then you should be proactively monitoring and repairing the leaks.
- Bravo if you are proactively monitoring your sales pipeline and repairing the leaks
- If not – you are not alone and have potential to improve your sales
2. Blocked Sales Pipeline
A blocked sales pipeline is different to a leaking pipeline in that your potential customers know and like you – but still don’t buy. Do you know why? Is it because they are not convinced/interested (credibility, value, relevance)? Is it because it is too hard to activate (complex buying process)? Or, too hard to implement (inconvenient, difficult to understand)? Each of these blockages can be solved – but you need to understand them first.
- Bravo if you know how to help your customers to buy from you.
- If not – you are not alone and have potential to improve your sales
3. Broken Promises
American Sales Guru Jack Daly says that ‘sales is the transfer of trust’. It is the job of sales and marketing to make the promises, and role of operations/delivery teams to deliver on them. Fail to deliver on the promises made will inevitably lead to bad customer relationships, which will impact on repeat sales and your reputation in the marketplace. Does your sales and marketing team fully understand what they can promise, and are they communicating their promises to the operations/delivery teams? Do you have quality controls in place to ensure that your promises to your customers are being kept?
- Bravo if you are certain that your organisation is keeping the promises you are making to its customers.
- If not – you are not alone and have potential to improve your sales
4. Hidden Treasure
“Build it and they will come” is fiction, there is no point being a hidden treasure – you could be the best there is but if your potential customers are not aware of you they cannot buy from you. What feeds your sales pipeline is ensuring that your potential customers are aware of you. Where once this may have been about location, increasingly this will require a multiple tactic, multiple media approach. Do you know who your potential customers are and are you ensuring that they are aware of you?
- Bravo if you are certain that your potential customers are aware of you and think well of you.
- If not – you are not alone and have potential to improve your sales
5. Poorly Constructed Numbers
How much science goes into setting your price points and sales budget? Many businesses set their sales budget with more hope than science, and their price points without monitoring their competitor’s positions. The sales team then inherits the budget and price points. They will then individually assess the likelihood that they can meet the targets that will trigger bonuses. If the target is set too low, then they will only do what is required to trigger bonuses, (possibly hold some over to make sure that they can trigger the next bonus). If the target is set too high – which is the more common mistake – the sales team give up on the stretch targets and are now aiming for job security – either with your organisation or somewhere else.
- Bravo if you have well researched and reasoned price points and sales targets.
- If not – you are not alone and have potential to improve your sales
Conclusion
Nearly every business has the potential to improve its sales with a few adjustments to its sales and/or marketing. If you have identified the opportunity to improve more than one of the top five reasons for poor sales outlined above, you might find it easier to resolve them one at a time. Give priority to the one that you think is costing you the most sales and solve it first. If you have ticked all of them, don’t be depressed, think of the opportunity for growth! Similarly, if you are not sure where to start, then start with making sure you are not breaking your promises. Then move onto monitoring and repairing the leaking sales funnel, then unblocking it. Some would argue that you should raise awareness first, however there is not much point churning potential customers through a leaking or blocked sales pipeline – it just damages your reputation with them and makes it harder to sell to them at a later stage.
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