Salesopedia - Why a Salesperson Fails at Selling

Why a Salesperson Fails at Selling

Written by Steve Martinez

... and How to Prevent It

If you stay in sales long enough, you realize that you can’t fix low sales activity. This is as blunt as I can put it. Sales activities drive opportunities which lead to sales. If salespeople don’t do the sales activities, the opportunities won’t develop and sales won’t appear. This is a predictable, yet simple equation. I believe it was Zig Ziglar who said, “If you do the things you ought to do, when you ought to do them, the day will come when you can do the things you want to do, when you want to do them.”

Last month I was reminded how some sales people try to bypass the sales activity with clever tactics, personality and networking. Sales can either be the hardest low paying job or the easiest high paying job there is. I also believe that success comes from the right mix of being smart about what is done and doing the right things.

Managing Sales Contacts and Action Plans

Waiting at the desk for the telephone to ring is not selling. Salespeople must be pro-active and make contact with prospects and customers. If you employ a sales system that records sales activity, the numbers and action plans will predict your sales growth. In sales, you need to know what the success metrics are. This requires an examination of your sales activity results and keeping track of the ratios of success.

When a salesperson monitors the number of sales calls they make to the number of appointments they get, this is an important success ratio. Keeping this data will help anyone analyze the sales activity. When the success ratios drop, or rise, you can often remember what you changed and learn from this. Unfortunately, you can’t discover the ratios, if you don’t have the sales activity numbers. Accurate sales activity numbers are critical to sales activity analysis. If you change a sales script just a little, it might change the outcome of your activity results. This is important.

Analysis of the Sales Activities

One of the reasons salespeople don’t like documenting sales activity is because they don’t understand the value from the analysis. Additionally, if sales activity numbers are inaccurate, they don’t help. The important metrics in managing sales is the success ratios of where success and failure is taking place. Correcting and improving these metrics is where a smart salesperson can further improve and become a star salesperson.

Steve Martinez
		About the author:
		When you want to impact sales with advanced selling strategies -- signup for Impactivator our sales e-newsletter. Selling Magic teaches businesses and salespeople how to automate and customize CRM programs. This article was written by Steve Martinez, President of Selling Magic, LLC. http://www.sellingmagic.com/
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