A lot of sales efforts fail. In fact, about 53% of sales teams don’t hit their quotas, 54% of sales reps missed their quota in 2021, and only 1 in 4 sales teams are able to reach 75% of their designated quota. Now, why is that? Failure is due to 5 main variables:
- No product-market fit
- Don’t know their ideal customer profile (ICP)
- Can’t reach their ideal customer profile to have a conversation
- Don’t convert their ideal customer profile
- Can’t keep their ideal customer profile
In this article, we take a deep dive into each of these 5 main variables. Read on for more.
No Product-market Fit
This is likely a founder of a startup who didn’t objectively interview 100 potential buyers and correctly synthesize the data to form an MVP (minimal viable product). (Eric Ries’ book–Lean Startup–has some good work on this)
Doesn’t know their Ideal Customer Profile
It’s likely that sales & marketing didn’t work together to interview the customer base to properly identify why their customers like them. Or more importantly, what their life was like before your company, the biggest impacts that working together has had on them, and the benefits of working together. (Interviewing tips for sales professionals blog By Bryan Whittington)
Can’t reach their Ideal Customer Profile to Have a Conversation
Your sales team likely hasn’t realized the shift in the market and instead is trying volume over accuracy & not fully adapting to the remote/hybrid workforce model. This isn’t a technology/sales enablement issue, this is now about leveraging resources to inform the sales team with whom they are most likely to have a conversation. (Check out Phone-Ready-Leads with Ryan Reisert)
Don’t convert their Leads
If your sales team hasn’t created an ICP (ideal customer profile), doesn’t have a strong onboarding & training reinforcement, doesn’t adhere to a sales process, and may have an oversimplified or outdated GTM strategy – then there’s no way for them to be extremely successful at lead conversion. (We can help with this – check out the self-assessment tool here)
Can’t keep their ideal customer profile
If your sales team isn’t onboarding customers well, doesn’t have a customer success plan and your offering doesn’t deliver results/ROI–there’s a more complex issue, and that’s okay! We understand that most companies don’t want to admit their having trouble with customer retention but, confession is the first step to recovery.
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There is no one-size-fits-all approach to solving these issues; however, the resources are out there and with some work, you can fix any & all of these. Find out how you compare – take a sales maturity self-diagnostic survey: https://lnkd.in/gGpMT6aP