When your salespeople are under performing, are you working on the right side of the problem? Are you providing more technical product training when their final presentations aren’t closing business? Are you re-shuffling their territories when they can’t make enough appointments with new prospects? Are you changing their compensation packages when they aren’t hitting their goals? Identifying weaknesses in your salespeople could drastically improve your results and help you fix the right selling problems.
One of the top weakness that we find in some salespeople is called non-supportive buy cycle. When a salesperson has a non-supportive buy cycle it indicates that the way this person goes about the process of buying something for him/herself does not support the selling process. For example, when your salespeople make major purchases personally, do they shop on price? Do they comparison shop? Do they take time to think things over?
The impact of non-supportive buy cycle is that the salesperson will avoid saying or doing those things which, in his/her mind, would change how the prospect feels about him/her. This includes, but is not limited to tough questions, legitimate confrontation and the potential inability to handle rejection or a 'no'.
A salesperson’s “buying cycle” should mesh with his/her company sales cycle. If your expectation is to have your salespeople close in a short period and they are wired the wrong way, you may be expecting too much. The buyer’s stalls make sense to these people.
There is a 100% mirror image correlation between how a salesperson makes a purchase and the behavior he/she will tolerate from a prospect. If your people can overcome this issue they could win 50% more business.
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