Is this person sabotaging your sales success?

The situation

Alex sells software that helps clients grow sales by speeding up new product introductions and shortening ramp time for new reps. It automates aggravating, time-consuming procedures and lets the sales team easily create and update sales portals — without having to wait for a slow IT department. (For some decision makers, this is all they need to hear!)

The sabotage

As Alex told me about how he kept experiencing the same failure over and over again, it became clear that someone was sabotaging his sales. That person was Alex!

When you keep experiencing the same problem over and over again, it's time to look for the root cause.

Alex kept making the mistake of assuming decision makers just needed reassurance that his technology could solve every problem they faced. What the decision maker really wanted, however, was to meet objectives. Alex should have kept his focus there and kept exploring the business issues.

Instead of promising easy fixes, Alex could have asked:

What other problems are you facing because you can't get IT to make the changes do you need?
What impact does their lack of urgency have on meeting your business goals?
What issues are created when you have all those old versions of proposals out there?
How does that affect your distribution channel?
How else is the lack of up-to-date info on your sales portal impacting your ability to drive revenue growth?
What difficulties do you run into because you can't do this easily?
Who else is impacted?

By jumping ahead to the ease of the solution, Alex never helped the decision maker understand the value of making a change. As a result, interested prospects kept fizzling out, opting to stay with the status quo.

Unfortunately, unless he started exploring the business issues in more depth, he was doomed to repeat this pattern time and time again.

What sales obstacles are you creating?

What about you? When you initially connect with a decision maker, are you creating a hole that's hard to crawl out of? In today's marketplace, it can take forever to finally connect with a prospective client — you don't want to blow it.

Same thing about your initial client meetings. You have one chance to advance your relationship. If you mess up, you're not invited back.

While it's easier to blame your prospects for stringing you along or being jerks, it doesn't change the results you're getting.

The only way to solve these sales challenges is to be ruthless in your own self-assessment.

Sometimes you need other people to help you understand where you're making your mistakes. Alex would never have dreamed that his service-oriented attitude was the root cause of his sale challenges.

I've sabotaged my own sales too. It's hard to admit, but it's true. Once I was able to identify that I was the problem, however, I was able to shift gears and finally make the sale.

To find out how you might be sabotaging your own success, you may need to look outside yourself for insight. Brainstorm with your colleagues, check with your boss or explore the issue with other sellers. Don't be defensive; try to figure out where changes could help. Then experiment with the new options.

When you finally eliminate those sales obstacles that you've unintentionally created for yourself, the payback can be huge!

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