In this post, we’re going to take a look at 5 of the most common problems B2B sales reps face and how you can add solve them.
Let’s jump right into it:
1. Time Management
Here’s a sales statistic that will interest business owners in every industry around the world:
According to research from Accenture, sales reps spend almost 64% of their time doing non-sales related activities. What do these activities include? Repetitive tasks such as checking E-mails, gathering information about clients, etc.
Let that figure sink in for a second. Imagine if your receptionist was at his/her desk for only 14 hours a week, or if your entire staff decided to spend almost two-thirds of their day on their phones. Would any business owner ever accept that? No, of course not.
So why do we force our sales reps to waste so much of their valuable time on tasks that can easily be automated such as manual data entry and responding to E-mails?
Time management is a common problems in most industries around the world, and there is only one solution: automation. Your sales reps shouldn’t have to waste a second of their day trying to find potential clients they can prospect to when there are software tools available that can generate leads for your business.
Don’t worry about how much money you will have to spend every year on software licenses; just get it done. The result is encouraging and will help you overcome your cost in the long run.
2. Wrong Prospects
It won’t matter how great your sales team is at preparing e-mails and marketing material if they’re targeting customers who have no interest in your products. Stop making your sales team waste time on unqualified leads and align the business’ focus on prospects who are most likely to buy.
How do you do this? By developing a detailed profile of what your ideal customer looks like. This profile will contain not only physical characteristics such as their age, sex, and location, but also their behavioural preferences. Get into the minds of your target market and try to figure out how they think and what they like.
Creating an ideal customer profile will mean your sales reps will know exactly which market they need to target and what they need to do to close the sale.
3. Miscommunication Between Departments
Your marketing team will never know what kind of material they should create without proper input from the sales team. Your sales team won’t be able to prospect to potential client if the marketing team doesn’t give them a list of leads.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise: sales is a cumulative effort that requires effective communication between multiple departments. If everyone decides to go off on their own without involving the person next to them, your business is going to suffer more than you might think.
Don’t believe us? Consider the following statistics about sales-marketing alignment:
- When sales and marketing processes don’t work together, B2B Companies experience a 10% loss of revenue or more per year.
- With sales and marketing alignment, companies generated 208% more revenue from their marketing campaigns.
- Sales and marketing teams working together increase a company’s customer retention by 36% and successful sales by 38%.
4. Inability To Reach Out To Leads
So you’ve managed to build the ideal customer profile, perfect your sales techniques, and found a large number of ideal leads but you can’t seem to contact them? It sounds like your sales team has a major data problem.
This is a common occurrence in B2B industry since customers don’t like to leave their actual contact information when they’re using a website. Instead, they use fake aliases to avoid getting calls from annoying sales reps who won’t leave them at peace.
The solution? Get in touch with a big B2B data provider, who can help you fill in the gaps in your database and hook you up with genuine numbers and E-mails for all the leads you’ve shortlisted.
5. Lack Of Training
It’s surprising to hear how many business owners don’t believe in rigorous sales training, despite its obvious benefits. The reasoning these CEO's give for not investing in training is that employees tend to leave for greener pastures after they’ve been trained, making the investment worthless.
However, if you’ve been in the sales industry for a while, you’ll know this isn’t true. Yes, there is the odd case of an employee or two using their training to join better organisations, but people generally tend to stick around if they feel like they’re being taken care of by their employers.
Besides, the benefits you receive from training employees far outweigh any damage caused to the organisation by a few resignations. Not only will it makes your sales team more effective, but it’s also been linked to a direct increase in revenue.
