There can be many reasons why your business isn’t seeing sales growth, but there is no point in ‘guessing’ why.
Common reasons for slow sales growth
If you’re experiencing slow sales growth, could it be*:
- You don’t have the right people in the right roles?
- The sales coaching in place isn’t effective enough to get you to the next level?
- The sales process is not optimised?
- Low conversion rates as a result of either ineffective salespeople and/or process?
- Ineffective positioning against the competition?
- Unrealistic expectations?
- Not enough quality opportunities in the pipeline?
- Salespeople lack consultative selling skills?
- Salespeople lack the ability to sell value?
*list courtesy of Objective Management Group.
With a variety of possibilities, it would be very difficult to truly understand the actual issue (or issues) without evaluating your sales force. And if you just decide to pick one thing from the list without a quantifiable reason why you are focusing on it – you will most likely waste time and resource without a measurable return on investment.
Take a holistic look
More often than not, it is about taking an all-inclusive look at the sales side of the business – including people, processes and the position of the company in the market. Yes, this sounds like a lot of work, but if it means being able to accurately define what is stalling your business’s growth – isn’t it worth it?
It is no doubt frustrating to consistently fail to reach sales targets; having to report back on a less than satisfactory performance to shareholders, and having to manage a consistently high turnover of salespeople. But the good news is there is real data which can assist you to increase profits and select the right sales reps to take you there.
Inadequacies in the sales industry
From research that has been continually gathered over the past 26 years – covering 10,000 companies in more than 400 industries – these findings are backed by science:
- There is an elite 6 per cent of salespeople, another 20 per cent who are good, and 74 per cent who are ineffective.
- 18 per cent of all sales managers should not be in sales management.
- 34 per cent of sales managers aren’t trainable.
- Only 7 per cent of all sales managers are effective at sales coaching.
- When companies hire sales candidates that Objective Management Group don’t recommend, 75 per cent of those salespeople fail inside of 6 months.
- When companies hire sales candidates Objective Management Group do recommend, 92 per cent end up in the top half of their sales force within 12 months.
These are certainly compelling statistics, and provide just a small insight to the inadequacies present in the sales industry. Most businesses will think that these findings don’t apply to them, and for the ones who are hugely successful and profitable, and don’t want more growth – they are probably right. But for those who are only achieving average results, and are consistently struggling to gain traction in their market, then there is certainly a scientifically proven way to provide a greater understanding of what is going wrong.
