15 Sales Challenges Facing Sales Reps

These days, the major influencing factors required to close a deal have more to do with the buyer than with a salesperson's ability. 

With information at their fingertips, buyers are more informed than ever. Buyers can research your company, products, and even your salespeople before deciding.

They can compare your offerings against all your competitors, are well-informed on what will work for them, and won’t be sold over a cold call or a pushy sales call. 

So, how do you work with this new dynamic to close more?

Other related blogs:

• The five top sales priorities in business today
• Free CRM: Is HubSpot Sales CRM Really Free?
• 4 Steps to Build a Strong Sales Pipeline

The changing sales landscape

In all likelihood, your prospect has narrowed their choices to two or three select vendors before reaching out.

As online and digital selling evolve, successful salespeople are moving away from old hard-sell tactics and shifting into a trusted advisor role.

Salespeople need to connect with customers on their preferred channels to keep up with shifting consumer sentiments, which are now heavily influenced by technology. And they need to be authentic and helpful in their messaging and approach.

Salespeople need to incorporate these changing sentiments into their sales strategy. Let's show you how.

15 Sales Challenges Facing Sales Reps

These are the top challenges faced by sales reps:

1. Build trust & take your time

Challenge ⛰️

In the wake of the Covid-19 global pandemic and social distancing protocols, most sales reps are making use of emails and messaging as their dominant form of communication with their prospects.

This comes with its own set of challenges, as standing out from all the other emails and messages prospective customers receive is difficult. Establishing credibility with a virtual barrier between you and your prospects requires new techniques to differentiate you from your competitors.

Solution 🎯

This can be achieved through personalised interactions. Having someone behind the sales interaction who the prospect can relate to and connect with in a ‘human’ way is crucial. It is also important to ensure your efforts are relevant, timely, and on the right platform.

I can't tell you how many random, generic connection requests, messages, and emails I get on a daily basis. I just ignore them, and if they reach out again with the same lame, generic, and unresearched outreach, I mark them as spam or block them.

Take it slow. Don't send someone your offer immediately after they've connected or you've had a brief online chat. Take your time and build rapport. Like or comment on some of their posts. Do this before you throw a pitch. 

2. Marketing and sales teams integration

Challenge ⛰️

Sales and marketing traditionally work in silos, which can negatively affect lead management and your ability to close deals. When marketing and sales are working in different systems and managing data separately, duplication and loss of data are almost guaranteed to occur.

The marketing team rarely qualifies website leads, and they send crap through to the sales team. They either forward all leads automatically without qualification, or if they qualify the leads, they send them a week later!

Why should a salesperson interrupt their workflow to call a poor-quality lead? 

Solution 🎯

Combating this requires sales and marketing teams to break down the traditional silos and work together. The best way to do this is with an integrated and shared system.

This can be achieved by providing a central source of truth that integrates both teams and the leads and projects they are working on. These systems can be bought off the shelf in the form of a CRM like HubSpot that can manage both the sales and marketing functions. 

The best lead website leads are the ones that are qualified and passed onto an available salesperson within five minutes. That lead gets an instant good feeling when someone reaches out quickly and with the relevant context. 

3. Getting a response from prospects

Challenge ⛰️

Sales reps agree that the most common challenge they face is getting a response from prospects. Despite (or maybe because of...) all the devices we have on hand and all the communication technology available, consumers are less responsive than ever before.

Sales reps need to differentiate their voices from the crowd and become trusted consultants that their customers can rely on. 

Solution 🎯

Use video to differentiate yourself. When you reach out to a lead, include a video in your email. This is called 'video prospecting', and solutions like HubSpot, Loom, and Vidyard allow you to do this.

Remember what we said about taking it slow. This is a perfect time to send something great and sit back while it does its magic with your prospect. 

4. Closing deals

Challenge ⛰️

Closing a deal is the second-most challenging aspect of sales. Globally, people are facing challenging economic times, and, in markets that are increasingly competitive, consumers don’t want to feel pushed into buying.

Instead, consumers today prefer to do the legwork themselves. With readily available tools like search engines, acquiring expert knowledge on a company, product or service (and even the sales rep!) is easy.

Solution 🎯

The salesperson needs to become intimately familiar with the prospect's challenges and customise a solution tailored to that person's needs. Know more about your prospects needs and requirements than they do themselves! Out-research them.

What question are your prospects always asking you? We all have that one question we get asked, and we know how to answer it perfectly. Write the answer into a blog, or have someone ask you the question and make a video of you answering it using your phone.

Get the content up on your company blog, and share it like crazy on your social channels – especially LinkedIn. You can share it again every month! Don't be shy.

5. Prospecting good leads

Challenge ⛰️

Quality leads are becoming harder and harder to find. One of the main complaints we hear from salespeople is that the leads they get from their business are really poor quality.

Engaging with brands and companies is easy for consumers to do, but how do salespeople separate the wheat from the chaff? The answer lies in the alignment of marketing and sales with an SLA between the teams.

Aligning marketing and sales teams with an SLA can assist in qualifying quality leads before they are passed onto sales by using a solid CRM that can automatically score leads, plugs into LinkedIn for prospect information, and will only pass on leads that are ready to buy now.

An SLA also works the other way, with the sales team regularly giving the marketing team details on which leads were good so they can generate more of them.

Solution 🎯

Send the marketing team a weekly report with the progress of the leads they've supplied. Make the report easy to understand. They'll send you more leads if they know you are following up with them.

They'll also send YOU the good leads. Marketing teams are desperate for feedback on their leads, and quick follow up. It makes them look good when they report at the end of the month. Agree to a regular feedback schedule (SLA) with the marketing team. They'll be blown away.

6. Engaging multiple decision-makers at a company

Challenge ⛰️

Salespeople strive for in-company connections to be 3-wide and 3-deep. So a salesperson should have at least three contacts, and these contacts should be able to open an inroad into the business three levels deep, connecting to the key decision-makers.

Engaging multiple decision-makers and influencers is increasingly challenging for salespeople and can be solved by creating useful content that is targeted towards the organisation, and the various personas in that organisation. 

Solution 🎯

Create targeted content for both decision-makers and influencers that is highly shareable among colleagues.

Remember the question you get asked all the time? Expand it out now, put it on a letterhead or set of slides, and put the title 'Special Report' on it.

Add two new sections. One for the decision-makers (maybe the CEO, CFO, Head of XYZ...) and the other for the influencers (maybe the IT manager, administrator, or accountant...).

Answer the question in the way you’d explain it to them if you were sitting in front of that persona. PDF it and send this to your contacts at the prospect. 'I wrote this, I thought you might find it useful in your decision-making process.'

If it works well, ask the marketing department to design it into a proper branded sales document.

7. Avoiding discounting

Challenge ⛰️

No business wants to enter a price war, it is always a race to the bottom and no one wins. In order to bring in new business, salespeople might consider negotiating on their pricing, but this ultimately becomes a client expectation and there is no back-pedalling.

Sales reps should consider adding value, instead of discounting on price as a solution to finding an accord with new business prospects.

Solution 🎯

You've already added value during the sales process by unpacking some of your prospects problems with them. This is the value of consultative selling. 

Now look for a small element of that solution that you know you can deliver at a very low cost and relatively quickly. Give it to the prospect during the sales process - for free. It must be something the prospect will find very helpful and your competition will not think to throw into the deal or maybe can't.

I often provide an SEO audit for our potential clients websites. We simply run our SEO software on the website, add a few insights and share with the prospect. This 30 minutes of work always goes a long way. 

They are so pleased (and surprised) to get some value upfront without paying for anything. It's a good indicator for them of things to come if they choose to work with you. 

8. Connecting via the phone (getting in touch)

Challenge ⛰️

Our mobile devices have become an integral part of our daily lives, so how is it that salespeople are finding it more and more difficult to reach people on the phone?

It is true that with so many means of communicating, often people prefer to email or message over having a conversation on the phone. 

Salespeople can consider alternative means to communicating which don't require two people to be available at the same time. But I still think talking on the phone is critical in the sales process. So much is said in between the purpose of a call. So many little cues that can enhance your deal probabilities. 

Actually speaking to you prospect is so you prospect is a natural part of closing a deal - but it can be hard to time that call for a productive call. Ie. So that you're not interrupting them.

Solution 🎯

Using a platform like HubSpot CRM, you are notified when a prospect opens up your email or quote so you can call them to follow up.

They will more than likely answer, as you're not interrupting another task, meeting or process. This makes connecting more relevant. Also, if a sale goes dead, and they open up your quote six months on - you have a live one...

9. Incorporating Social Media into the sales process

Challenge ⛰️

A major challenge for sales reps today is understanding how to use social media tools in the selling process. It comes down to understanding where your leads are and connecting with them on their preferred channels.

Sales should work with the marketing teams to understand where customers are handing out online and identify the best fit for business strategies to connect with their audience. Marketing can then use relevant social channels like the B2B network – LinkedIn to locate and target the best prospects.

Solution 🎯

Sponsored LinkedIn InMail campaigns is an incredibly powerful tool for targeting new prospects in very specific industries and locations. If you haven't got the technical skills or the marketing team that can execute on this, one-on-one InMails are a good alternative even if this is a little more time-consuming.

10. CRM systems

Challenge ⛰️

Sales teams tend to see a CRM as extra admin that slows them down and provides minimal benefits. What's the point of tracking meetings and activities that they already know they are doing?

"The CRM system is just for the bosses to see what we're up to - there's no other benefit to it." This is often the perception from sales about CRM.  This is not the case, there is more to it.

Solution 🎯

CRM’s are designed to aid sales reps in their efforts and reduce the time they spend on admin tasks so they have more to spend talking to prospects.

Modern CRM systems like HubSpot CRM connect to your email and calendar and track all activities and communications with prospects and clients - automatically. There really is no extra effort required.

Most importantly its easy to see if your numbers are above above or below where they should be at any time; be they sales numbers or activities. And a rep will always know if they need to put the hammer down and sell, or start to sandbag and prep for next month. 

It’s all down to the correct implementation and alignment of the CRM to the sales reps that are going to be using it and the sales processes they follow. When done correctly, a CRM will be an invaluable asset for sales reps to close more deals and manage more leads effectively and efficiently.

Check out a demo of HubSpot CRM by the author.

11. Establishing urgency

Challenge ⛰️

Prospects buy on their own time, this does not align with sales team targets and the urgency they feel to close.

 

Solution 🎯

Explaining the time required to launch their project can help motivate your prospects to sign. Understand their business requirements and deadlines and work back from there. 

One that works for us is providing a small discount for a signature by the end of the month. We also let the prospect know that the the discount needs to go through an approval process by the bosses and they will not approve a second time if the discount is not taken advantage of. 

12. Overcoming price objections

Challenge ⛰️

Presenting the price to prospects can either be as simple as being featured on your website or needing to be a full discussion with the prospect. The latter becomes complex when the prospect is comparing you to your competitor’s pricing or their perceived value is low.

Solution 🎯

Elevate the prospect’s perceived value to the actual value they will be provided at that cost. As long as you’re addressing the real problem they are facing, the value will speak for itself. Ask yourself, is the service or product actually solving their needs or is it just something they showed interest in and are you now pushing on them to buy?

Understanding your competitors and the market pricing is essential. Are you overpriced or is the quality and value you are providing worth more? Do you need to drop your pricing to create value for entry-level products and services that will bring in more revenue from their upsells and return business?

13. Lead management

Challenge ⛰️

Depending on the success of marketing campaigns, sales teams can quickly get overwhelmed with leads in all stages of the buyer’s journey.

Solution 🎯

Leads must be qualified as soon as they come in. This is easy to do on a website form just by adding a qualification field - eg. 'What is you annual turnover' Too low and you know that calling the lead is a waste of time. In fact a system like HubSpot can automatically send a polite rejection email.

With a CRM system in place, leads can be segmented (eg. by turnover) and help marketing qualify leads so sales teams only work on the leads that are ready to be contacted.

Lastly, with a good CRM or marketing software a process can be developed so leads and prospects are qualified, nurtured and contacted only when they are ready to buy. 

14. Qualifying Leads

Challenge ⛰️

As mentioned, sales teams wasting time on unqualified leads costs time and money. It’s important to focus on the right leads that come through the funnel and at the right time.

Solution 🎯

Using the a simple qualification criteria for sales and marketing leads is critical to an effective sales enablement strategy.

If your company has the right personas in place, you can easily reference them when qualifying your prospects.

The basis on which you qualify your prospects can potentially be broken down into the following aspects:

1. ICP (Ideal Customer Profile): Do they fit into your company ICP?
2. Needs: Have you understood their needs, and can your solution easily meet them?
3. Decision makers and influencers: Who is the key decision maker, and who are their influencers? How many people are involved in this process? Are they all aware of you, your solution, and the business needs it solves?
4. Your competition: Who are your competitors? How do your offerings differ from theirs? Can you position you solution better at this prospect?
5. Location: Can you service the prospect easily?

15. Nurturing leads at the right time

Challenge ⛰️

It’s easy to send out emails and make calls to a prospect list, but the time you make contact with them can make or break a relationship.

Analysing each prospect is time-consuming and full of gaps without proper activity tracking in place. So its just easier to apply the volume based shotgun approach.

Solution 🎯

With a CRM in place, leads can be qualified centrally in a single system. using those qualification criteria, sales teams can prioritise outreach, and even set up scheduled reminders for themselves to do outreach at the perfect time. 

Good CRM systems can also trigger automations that send email sequences to prospects at set intervals. These triggers can range from visits to certain pages on your website to opens and clicks of your emails and even previous quotes.

Bonus

Upselling and return business

After a deal is closed, it’s easy to move your customer out of mind while you focus on new business. Remember, though, that every first-time buyer presents upsell opportunities that should not be wasted.

Solution 🎯

These clients can be automatically added to nurture campaigns that keep your business top of mind and educated on your other services and offerings. With a CRM, sales teams can be reminded of clients’ regular events and purchase habits to reach out to them pre-emptively rather than reactively.

Final thoughts

The challenges faced by salespeople can be addressed with a modern sales strategy driven by accurate information. They key ingredient to this type of information is a CRM system. 

A CRM system helps marketers and sales managers make better decisions about their outreach and conversion tactics while bringing both departments together to achieve their shared goals.