The Biggest Reason Salespeople Lose Deals

A few months ago the Harvard Business Review online featured a list entitled Reasons Why Salespeople Lose Deals. This had been compiled by Steve Martin and was based on interviews with several hundred business-to-business salespeople across a wide variety of industries including high technology, telecommunications, financial services, consulting, industrial equipment, healthcare and electronics.

In the interviews, the salespeople were asked to describe the top challenges they were facing which prevented them from winning more business (as opposed to a general list of items that made their job more difficult), and the nature of the question was an open ended one, so as not to influence their answers. Using this approach, what came out on top as the number 1 challenge was that of 'No Decision'; 
The real enemy of salespeople today isn't their archrivals; it's no decision. Customers will go to great lengths to reduce the stress of buying. They list their needs in RFP documents that are hundreds of pages in length. They hire consultants to verify that they are making the right decisions. They'll conduct lengthy product evaluations and talk to existing users of the products to ensure they work as advertised. All these steps are taken in an effort to eliminate their fears, reduce their uncertainties, and satisfy their doubts. However, customers are never 100 percent sure they are purchasing the right product and there are always naysayers in the organisation who are against moving forward. As a result, customers frequently won't make a purchase even after an exhaustive evaluation. 
Many of the dysfunctional behaviours described here (such as lengthy RFPs and the 'fear' of moving forward) are ones that we recognise in conversations with B2B sales teams over the past 10 years. However, if the emphasis in this paragraph is on the behaviours of the buying team, the focus we place in our work on this is predominantly on the mindsets and behaviours of the selling team, many of which contribute to the reality of a 'no decision'.
  • Right at the start, this includes the ability of a sales team to be aware of and establish the right intent in the minds of the buyer, so that they feel they are on their (the buyer's) rather than the seller's agenda. 
  • Thereafter, we work with selling teams to avoid the natural instinct to 'tell' or 'accept' when faced with a client query and instead to mutually explore, with a real emphasis on getting to the value from a clients perspective. 
  • We also recognise that the potential for constraining factors will arise in the course of our discussions with clients and, rather than avoiding these difficult conversations, we consider how to address these in a way that is congruent with the intent established at the outset (which is to help our clients succeed). 
  • Finally, as there are typically many stakeholders who will apply different criteria to the decision making process we identify ways to understand these criteria more effectively. 
  • When it then comes to sharing back our recommendations, we shift from trying to 'convince' to enabling a decision in the client's best interests, with a focus on the key beliefs a client would need to hold in order for them to proceed and the proof points needed to inform these beliefs.     
Our experience is that each of these elements is within the influence of the selling team and that in combination they can dramatically reduce the incidences of 'No Decision' from buyer teams.  

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