When leading a sales team, sometimes we can be victims of the “quantity myth.” We notice that our sales team is not consistently meeting goals, and we wonder what is going wrong. This is where the “quantity myth” comes in. We think we could help our sales team by getting them more leads with new sales strategy plan, more interns to support them, or more incentives for high sales.
While more is usually better in sales, often what your team needs is strategic help. If a proper system isn’t set up then adding more to it doesn’t fix the problem. You’re just tossing more fuel on the fire.
Here are ten warning signs that you will observe in your sales team when your team needs help with their sales strategy plan. If you observe any of these warning signs, it’s time for you to create a new sales strategy plan that will help your team achieve its goals every quarter.
Your team spends all of their time prospecting
Prospecting is the most important step of the sales process. As you assemble a database of potential clients, you are also setting goals for your sales team in terms of market fit.
However, sales teams can fall into a prospecting trap and spend all their time prospecting, rather than selling. This can happen if you are not reaching out to prospects who are the ideal client for your services or if your sales team doesn’t have the tools they need.
You don’t know enough about your prospects
Even if you have a lot of leads and your team is not wasting time prospecting, your team can still struggle with their sales data. This struggle comes about when a team has enough data, but the data is low-quality.
This can happen when you buy AI-verified sales data, which is frequently incomplete. If your team does not know enough about their prospects going into the sales call, they will spend too much time learning about the prospect and not enough time selling. They will also frequently encounter misinformation and prospects that are a bad fit.
Your sales team is not talking to decision-makers
Another way faulty sales data can slow down your sales team is not having enough information about the company structure. When your salespeople do not know the structure of the company they are calling, they often waste time selling products to people who are not decision-makers.
Check in with your team and see how often they find themselves talking to the decision-makers at the companies they are calling. How long is it taking to find a decision-maker? Do they often feel like their time is wasted talking to the wrong people?
You can’t seem to penetrate a niche market
When your company began, its founders probably thought that sales would be easy because they were highly catering to a small, niche market. Unfortunately, that dream of capturing a niche market is sometimes far from the reality of sales.
Sometimes, sales teams dedicated to selling within a niche market struggle to convince prospects to buy. Why? Well, there are a few reasons. The competition within a niche market can be fierce if another company has serviced the market for years. It can also be tough to get a toehold in a niche market because companies are less likely to try a new, untested product or service.
If you find your team struggling with penetrating a market, you should analyze and tweak your sales strategy. What issues are causing competitors to have negative reviews? What are the biggest needs in space? What level of awareness does the market have of you?
You’re not sure if you have the right ICP
Of course, you have created an ideal client profile (ICP), and perhaps you are finding companies that fit that profile, but what if your product is just not selling? Well, perhaps it is time to change your ICP. Many companies have to radically change their sales strategy to increase their sales.
One fun example: Silly Putty was originally invented as a replacement rubber for military use. However, it turned out that the military was not the perfect client for Silly Putty. Children were. Like the creators of Silly Putty, you might need to reinvent your ICP.
You can’t find companies who fit your ICP
Now, perhaps you are sure you have the right ICP. It’s specific enough without being too specific, and perhaps you even know that it is an underserved market. So why can’t you find interested companies that fit your ICP?
In some fields, lead generation is simply more difficult. If you work in one of these fields, finding professional help with lead generation can be incredibly useful. You may also need a strong initial customer to break you into the market and provide a positive case study and reference.
Your sales reps are spending time searching for the contact info
Perhaps you can find companies, but it is difficult for your reps to find the right contact information for the company. You want contact information for the company decision-makers, and you want it to be up to accurate.
By reinventing your sales strategy, you can find a good system for finding the right contact information for your leads.
The sales operations team has outdated information in the CRM
Even if your team has good contact information, leads can go stale in just a few months, making a great contact rotten before you have time to make the call. If you find that your leads are going stale quickly and your operations team has outdated information in the CRM, it might be time to devise new lead gen options and think over outreach timing with your sales strategy.
Data in your CRM contains typos and mistakes
Furthermore, human error often leads to inaccurate CRM data. Even the best workers mistype or confuse formatting guidelines every once in a while, and these cumulative mistakes can slow down a sales team. A professional who can help you reinvent your sales strategy will often help connect you with a lead verification service that will help you avoid these typos and mistakes.
When you get help with your sales strategy, you could also get some help from human resources professionals who will help you incentivize swift, accurate work. Remember, creating a successful strategy means covering all of your bases.
Marketing isn’t able to accurately retarget accounts for demand generation
Sometimes, you have already made a connection with a client and made a sale, but you can’t retarget that client when you have a new offer for them. This can be incredibly frustrating, and many talented members of sales staff waste their time trying to connect with past clients for demand generation.
A successful sales strategy must include a plan for keeping in touch with clients after you have completed a transaction so that you can reach out to them with new offers when the time comes. If you do not have such a plan in place, it’s a good idea to create a sales strategy that includes a plan for staying in touch with clients after a sale.
If you have read through this list and found that at least one and perhaps more of these signs are happening within your sales team, then it is time for you to rethink your sales strategy.
