Sales can be a tricky thing if you don’t know what you’re doing. You could be wasting time and money and not actually closing any deals. Many salespeople have drastically different ideas of what the ideal sales process is and how to achieve a close. However, below are some of the myths salespeople learn early in their career. Before you dive into your sales job, take some time to look over some of these ideas you just might have.
Sales is only a numbers game.
Sheer activity is not the only thing that matters when it comes to sales. Sure, activity is important but what really matters is that you are feeding the right people into the funnel in the first place and nurturing those prospects who have come in off of a referral. More calls do not necessarily equate to more deals. Rather, focus on building a strategy that increases the close rate that results in more deals.
Marketing Replaces Selling.
Marketing does not replace selling. In fact, if you don’t know how to sell managed services I would suggest that you stop marketing altogether. If your marketing and sales teams are not aligned, you can find yourself burning through leads. You’re spending money to get prospects to engage with you and then when it happens, if you don’t know where to take them next, you can find yourself with an empty funnel. When the prospect calls or makes contact that means marketing has done its job. Marketing is used to generate the curiosity and the interest for the salesperson to capitalize on.
Developing a sales process is all it takes.
Defining a sales process is only one of the first steps in becoming a successful sales professional. Top sales performers focus on the execution of the sales process. You can have a plan for making sales all day, but if you don’t actually follow the process and ensure that this step is completed to your fullest ability, then you are sure to fail.
Social media makes it easier for salespeople to gain new accounts.
While it’s true that our technology-driven world makes it easier for people to connect now more than ever before, it also makes it easier for our prospects to not engage with us. With the constant bombardment of ads, people are being hit with an onslaught of phone calls and emails about different products all of the time. So how do you stand out amongst all the white noise? You let everyone else sound the same and you work on creating first impressions that matter.
There is no need for balance between lead generation and lead management.
Many companies make the same mistake in believing that they can get better sales results just by constantly engaging in lead generation activities to simply dump more leads into the funnel. But lead generation alone is not enough. You have to make sure that you are constantly nurturing the leads that you already have in order to move them further along in the funnel. If you do a good job at gaining more leads and working with the ones you already have, you can find yourself in a spot of financial success.
Read the first part of Top Sales Myths series
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