Top Twelve Sales Problems Today and How to Overcome Them

Sales have always been dynamic, but today’s challenges are more complex than ever. The pandemic created many changes on the customer side, including how sales teams sell. From changing buyer behaviors to technological disruptions, sales professionals must be equipped to handle various sales problems.

Below are the top twelve sales problems today and strategies to overcome them.

1. Information Overload

Buyers now have access to endless information, often arriving at conversations with sellers overwhelmed and confused. This can lead to indecision. Harvard released a study about what they referred to as decision fatigue. We are making over ten times the decisions we used to make even three years ago. Another article titled Decision Fatigue: A Conceptual Analysis shared the below.

“It is estimated that an American adult makes 35,000 decisions a day (Sollisch 2016). While some of these day-to-day decisions are seemingly benign, an emerging body of science indicates that making decisions may possess negative ramifications for controlling ones’ behavior and the quality of subsequent decisions. This phenomenon, known as decision fatigue, describes the impaired ability to make decisions and control behavior as a consequence of repeated acts of decision-making. Evidence suggests that individuals experiencing decision fatigue demonstrate an impaired ability to make trade-offs, prefer a passive role in the decision-making process, and often make choices that seem impulsive or irrational.”

Another article titled Opinion: Recover from Decision Fatigue shared the following.

Decision fatigue is a “state of mental overload that can impede a person’s ability to continue making decisions,” according to the American Medical Association. After making many successive decisions in a day, an individual’s ability to make decisions progressively worsens.
While it can be difficult to quantify, decision fatigue, according to Medical News Today, encompasses a range of negative mental and emotional states a person experiences after making a series of decisions.

Solution:
So, we have the phenomenon of decision fatigue impacting all of us, coupled with more information available at the click of a mouse. No wonder buyers feel overwhelmed. Considering that over 70% of decision-makers make decisions to avoid risk, they put off decisions rather than making poor ones.

Salespeople must evolve from transactional reps showing up, throwing up more features and benefits, and becoming trusted advisors by simplifying the buying process. Instead of overwhelming prospects with more information and decisions to make, focus on curating relevant data and offering clear, valuable insights that directly address their pain points. Here, strong discovery skills, business acumen, and creative problem-solving skills help salespeople make complex problems easy and quick to navigate.

If you feel you may be suffering from decision fatigue, this is a great article from Harvard that can help. This Harvard method can help you make better decisions that will lead to success.

2. Longer Sales Cycles

As businesses become more cautious and decision-makers more risk-averse, sales cycles have lengthened, making it harder to close deals quickly. For some of my clients who contact me, sales cycles that were once one to two months are now twelve to eighteen months.

Solution:
We must build trust early on to shorten sales cycles and maintain momentum through consistent communication. Use clear timelines, set the next steps at every stage, and ensure each interaction adds value. We train salespeople in project management and time management skills so they can help lead their clients to quicker solutions that impact their businesses sooner. When does your client need your product or service? Once we understand this, we can create a plan to meet their timeline. Additionally, leveraging CRM tools to track and streamline interactions can shorten sales cycles. Buying the right CRM for your business is a critical tool to help salespeople shorten sales cycle times.

3. Decision-Making Involves More Stakeholders

Many companies now involve multiple stakeholders in decision-making, complicating the sales process. When we train salespeople in selling skills, we often find teams that need qualifying skills. One of the top four questions we ask is about authority. Does the person we are speaking with have decision-making authority, or are they gathering information and presenting it to someone else, or are they gatekeepers? Are they the decision maker or part of a decision-making team? As we assess sales teams, far too many salespeople must reach decision-makers today. Salespeople often have a relationship with someone in the buyer role but not the key decision-makers in the organization. They usually speak with gatekeepers who have no decision-making authority.

Solution:
Engage all stakeholders early on and tailor your messaging to address each one’s specific concerns. Identify who makes decisions for your prospect or client. Understand each person’s role, pain points, and how your solution aligns with their priorities. We train sales teams to build what we refer to as a relationship matrix in their key accounts. We identify all the decision-makers and strategically build relationships with them. We teach salespeople how to ask buyers and gatekeepers to invite them to meetings with all decision-makers so they can quickly answer and address any questions they have.

4. Difficulty Differentiating in a Crowded Market

With so many products and services in every sector, standing out from the competition is becoming more challenging. Why your company? Can your salespeople answer that question conversationally without sounding like a canned sales pitch? As we assess sales teams for sales effectiveness, we ask them to share their value proposition. That is why your company has evaluated over 2 million salespeople globally. We have found less than 15% of salespeople have a strong value statement to share their company’s value drivers and distinctive competencies. Most salespeople have what they believe are value propositions, but often, they need to connect the dots between products and services and the value your customer will receive. Suppose we have taken a contact from prospect suspect to prospect. From prospect to qualified opportunity and sales, we cannot clearly articulate your company’s value drivers. We run the risk of being the best salespeople for our competitors. We have just coached, helped, and guided the customer to understand what they want and how solving it will affect their bottom line…they are sold. But are they sold on buying it from your salesperson?

Solution:
Rather than simply selling a product or service, focus on selling value. Train your sales teams to speak regarding the impact and financial outcomes of working with your company. How you sell is more important than what you sell today. Identify your unique selling proposition (USP) and emphasize how your solution solves the prospect’s specific problem in a way no one else can. Train your salespeople to speak in success stories that illustrate why your company …in a sea of competitors. Case studies and testimonials can also help demonstrate your solution’s unique value.

5. Lack of Personalization

In the digital age, prospects expect a highly personalized experience. To help personalize our solution offering, we train salespeople in discovery skills and questions specific to and customized to each industry. We often refer to the iceberg principle. Buyers share their needs to all salespeople and that is the part of the iceberg above the surface, everyone hears it. With strong discovery questions, we teach salespeople to uncover other essential decision-making criteria that untrained salespeople never ask. Adding these uncovered critical criteria not mentioned in the RFP gives the teams we train an unfair advantage over their competitors. Sales teams that fail to personalize and tailor their approach risk losing leads to competitors who are more in tune with their buyer’s needs.

Solution:
Use data-driven insights to personalize your messaging. Train your sales teams to have vital discovery questions. We encourage salespeople to understand what makes a strong discovery question and create their questions using their own language rather than ours. This helps their questions come out conversationally and naturally, and customers share much more with your salespeople than competitors. Understand your prospect’s industry, company, and even individual role, and customize your outreach accordingly. Here, we train your sales team on each decision-making persona in their industry and what is valuable to them. We ensure salespeople can customize their value conversations for each decision-making persona. Marketing automation and CRM systems can help you deliver personalized content at scale. Working with our client marketing organizations, we develop personas and language, value statements, presentations, and conversations that we know are important for each persona. Marking often reinforces this content on the website, social media posts, etc.

6. Prospects Ghosting After Initial Contact

After a promising first meeting, some prospects disappear without a trace, leaving sales reps wondering what went wrong. The salesperson thought the meeting went so well that they often shared their anticipated close with their managers and other leaders. We train sales teams to follow up with a proven cadence. If their efforts seem to go unheard, sales cycles grow longer. Our close rates decrease, and salespeople grow frustrated, hurting sales motivation and morale.

Solution:
Follow-up is critical. Use multiple channels—email, phone calls, and social media—to stay at the top of your mind without being pushy. We train salespeople to use a follow-up cadence with over ten touches since most salespeople quit following up after two attempts. Focus on adding value to each communication. For instance, share relevant industry insights or articles that might interest the prospect. We share case studies and ROI examples of how we helped customers like them to build more interest and urgency to engage with our buyers.

7. Pricing Pressure

With easy access to competitive pricing information, prospects often push for discounts, making it difficult for sales teams to close deals at the total price. Just as, on average, 67% of salespeople struggle with closing skills, we and an even more significant number of salespeople have never received negotiation training. On average, over 75% of buyers have received negotiation training. Couple their negation skills and the frequency they practice, and we should not be surprised we have a skills mismatch when it comes to pricing pressure. We train salespeople to have value-based conversations, not cost-plus quoting.

Solution:
Focus on value, not just price. How does your service or product impact the buyer’s bottom line? Again, research by Florida State found over 85% of buyers expect salespeople to connect what they sell to the value it delivers, and sadly, very few salespeople have that skill today. Could you make sure the prospect understands the total ROI of your solution? This requires salespeople to have business acumen training. You can use case studies or metrics to show how your offering will save them money or improve efficiency in the long run. Sales skills training is critical to deliver prices that stick. Where necessary, you can offer flexible payment plans instead of price cuts.

8. Lack of Alignment Between Sales and Marketing

In many organizations, sales and marketing teams need to be more aligned, leading to consistent messaging and lost opportunities. As I work with manufacturing and distribution companies, I often hear terms like “marketing qualified leads” and “sales qualified leads” that indicate sales and marketing are not on the same page. We must work together and help salespeople find and have conversations with ideal customers that lead to revenue. With buyers spending as much as 76% of the buying process online, we must have a robust, optimized website.

Solution:
Foster collaboration between sales and marketing. Regular meetings, shared goals, and integrated systems can help create a unified approach. Use CRM data to provide marketing feedback about the quality of leads and the messaging that resonates most with prospects. Sales must open their customers to marketing for interviews and meetings. Far too many sales teams prevent marketing from engaging with their customers, which is a huge mistake.

9. Difficulty Adapting to Remote Selling

The shift to remote selling requires a different skill set. Sales professionals who rely on in-person meetings may need help to build rapport or read body language over video calls. As we had to shift to virtual selling and web-based meetings during the pandemic, we observed several bad sales habits. For example, one is “pitch slapping.” The salesperson would have worked on building a relationship with rapport questions in person. However, some unstrained salespeople behave differently in Zoom meetings, jumping right into a pitch or demo without any questions.

Solution:
Invest in virtual selling skills training. Learn how to conduct engaging video calls, use digital tools for presentations, and communicate online. We recommend salespeople understand how to navigate Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams technology to ensure their meetings are professional and lead to revenue. Ensure you have a professional setup with good lighting, clear audio, and a distraction-free background. Train your salespeople to ask rapport and discovery questions to find unresolved problems and challenges for your customers, not assume they have issues, and start pitching.

10. Ineffective Time Management

With so many tasks, sales professionals often need help prioritizing their time effectively, leading to burnout or missed opportunities. In a recent study, salespeople today spend less than 30% of their sellable time selling. They are doing administrative tasks, entering information into the CRM, creating sales reports, preparing call reports, and helping AR collect past-due funds. As we assess salespeople, we find very few have been trained in time management skills.

Solution:
Use time management techniques such as time-blocking to prioritize important tasks like prospecting and follow-ups. Sales automation tools can help streamline administrative tasks, allowing salespeople to focus on building relationships and closing deals. We must train salespeople to manage their time, so they reach their key performance indicators each week.

11. Lack of Sales Skills Training

Working with manufacturers and their distributors we often find salespeople have very strong product and application knowledge but lack sales skills training. As we assess sales teams, we find less than 50% of salespeople have received sales skills training and even fewer sales managers have received sales management training. In markets where how you sell is as important as what you sell, we must train everyone in customer facing roles. Before the sales assessment technology today we traveled with our salespeople on what we referred to as four-legged sales calls to understand their skills and needed training. Although observation is still the best method to determine e skill level it would take six to eight months to travel with each salesperson. Today we can assess an entire sales organization in less than a week.

Solution:
We assess the entire sales and customer service team then we prescribe training and coaching to fill any sales skills gaps we discover. Often manufacturers and distribution sales teams have very strong product knowledge and presentation skills, so we do not prescribe presentation skills training. We do often see teams that need sales skills training in topics like getting past gatekeepers, reaching decision makers, professional prospecting, discover and qualifying questions, consultative selling, negotiations and closing skills. CEOs and CROs are often surprised to see such low closing skills scores. To help sales managers we also assess beliefs, motivations, processes, and systems. We help sales managers understand how to motivate each member of their sales team.

12. Lack of a Formal Sales Process or a Dated Formal Sales Process

The quickest way we have found to help clients experience a sales increase is implement a formal sales process. Without a formal sales process designed based on insights we learned interviewing your customers and prospects salespeople are basically winging it each day. They may jump from suspect to prospect and not have the required information. We see sales teams become transactional being too quick to quote without understanding the customer, their business and the problems and challenges their customers desire to solve.

Solution:
Conduct voice of customer research to understand how your buyers buy today and the criteria they need to make a buying decision and implement a formal sales process. Once we design your formal sales process with your sales leaders, we train your salespeople and all customer facing roles in the steps we have determined that help our customers solve their challenges quickly. We add the formal sales process steps in the CRM to reinforce salespeople follow them and gather the information they need in each step

What sales problems does your sales team face today?

Do you find salespeople need more time to prospect? They are too busy?

Are your salespeople achieving their new customer revenue objectives?

Will your key account salespeople achieve their key account growth goals this year?

How many strategic relationships do your salespeople have at their key accounts?

Are your salespeople asking great questions, demonstrating industry knowledge and competence, or pitch-slapping your prospects and customers?

Final Thoughts

Today’s sales challenges are numerous, but with the right strategies, training, and coaching, they can be effectively managed. By staying focused on providing value, building relationships, and using technology to streamline processes, sales teams can overcome these common obstacles and thrive in an ever-evolving market.

Let’s schedule a call if you would like to discuss fixing sales problems. If you would like a self-assessment tool to help determine your sales problems, you can download one here.