Costly Weaknesses of B2B Sellers

Let’s get brutally honest.

“It’s easy to confuse paycheck with real competency. Great sales results mask skill gaps”. Salespeople think if they sell a lot, it’s just because of them being great, clarifies Grant Brittain, the SVP of Sales at Notarize.

“With a lot of experience in sales comes the fact that you feel you know what your customer will say, and many get less coachable over time, which is the ultimate weakness”, says Chase Tarkenton, the VP of Sales at Uniphore.

So we asked him and a couple of other badass revenue leaders: What are the costly weaknesses of sellers today?

For Kevin Spier, the VP of Enterprise Sales at Heap,

it is truly interacting with the customer during the demo.

“Sellers give a lecture instead of having a conversation and lose customers’ focus and interest. You have to be knowledgeable, humble, and really care to do this right.”

Therefore, salespeople need to become more genuine and learn to build trust via authenticity.

“The bigger the gap between who you are at home and at work, the more stress it creates for the salesperson, and it’s not the “authentic self” that will close more deals,” believes Del White, the SVP of Global Sales at Quantela. This also was fully agreed upon by Gabe Biondo, the VP of Commercial Sales at Saviynt. When people sell, they turn into salespeople. They often become somebody else.

For Rob Hornish, the CSO of Redaptive, “the most lacking skill of salespeople is time management and personal productivity. “It feels like some lost it in the pandemic. If companies would train the productivity skills of their sellers, they might realize how big of a skill gap this is. Out of their 8-10 hours of daily work, you might be getting only about a couple of effective hours a day. If your sales org can improve that, you do not have to hire so many people.”

Prioritization and focus. Sellers should get an extra pair of eyes to help them focus their activities on the right opportunities and accounts, adds Taylor Corr, the Head of Sales at Quantcast.

Regarding that, Amy DeBartolo, the enablement manager at Acaglobal, highlights we should teach salespeople how to use sales tech effectively and better integrate it with each other to boost productivity.

Lastly, for 🎁 Katie Penner, the Head of Sales Development & Enablement at Sendoso, the weakness of sellers is doing in-depth research of company strategic quarterly goals and tying outreach to that. Reps can find this info on company pages or ask below-the-line stakeholders within the company and then take that insight and use it to spark conversation with executives.

The longer your sales process is, the less excitement the buyer has over time and the lower likelihood of closing that opportunity.

Now the question for you is: how much does it all cost you? How much is it worth if your salesforce would save 1h a day?

For example:

According to Gallup, companies are losing 6-11% of deals – caused by sellers’ inauthenticity in front of prospects.

So, how do you coach your SDRs/AEs to sell with their unique talents throughout the buying cycle, yet reinforcing sales methodologies?

Shameless plug:

Hackerly can help with this as well as the personal effectiveness of your salesforce.