5 Most Common Sales Roadblocks

Shweiki Media Printing Company is excited to announce that they’ve once again teamed up with Ryan Dohrn—founder of Brain Swell Media, Publisher of Sales Training World, and creator of the 360 Ad Sales Training system taught to over 4,000 sales people around the globe —to present a webinar on the five most common roadblocks that are stopping you from exceeding your sales goals.

All to often as I am teaching ad sales training workshops around the world, I have observed the most common problems stopping sales professionals from being a raging success. These problems are often based in random patterns that are passed off as a type of sales process. Random patterns in sales means that there are no repeatable patterns to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. It is inefficient.

Randomness has become the new normal among salespeople. Hundreds of blog posts each month push ideas like “reinvent yourself daily,” “commit yourself to nothing but change,” “question everything,” etc. I have found the exact opposite to be true. Commitment is what produces greater results in life, love and business.

There are five main roadblocks to sales success that can be fixed with commitment. Are you willing to commit to a new path for sales training success?

#1 Sales Roadblock: Call to Close Ratios

Do you know your number for call to close ratios? Do you really know how many calls you need to make to get a meeting? And then how many meetings you will need to host in order to get clients to close the deal? Knowing these numbers is very important for a sales professional.

The way I work my numbers is called the “Big 50 Prospecting Plan.” I work with 50 clients in order to get to 10 meetings and from those 10 meetings, I present 8 proposals. From 8 proposals, I normally close 5 deals.

To beat this first roadblock, you have to intimately know your call to close ratios. For most sales professionals, this is a huge roadblock that they do not understand how to overcome.

#2 Sales Roadblock: Total Sales Touches

It takes about 12-15 touches or attempts to get potential buyers to respond to what it is I am trying to sell. Most salespeople give up after 4 attempts and most of them are via email. To overcome this obstacle, think of yourself as a drip marketer. Drip marketing is the ability to slowly and consistently place sales marketing and information in front of a potential buyer.

Salespeople like to think that they will pick up the phone once and the sale will happen. That is not the case most often. It is important to work on creating email and voice templates that vary in length, tone and subject matter. Videos are another great way to boost interactivity.

#3 Sales Roadblock: Be Realistic When Trying to Fix Things

Most people are unrealistic about the amount of time it will take to see change in their ad sales results. In most cases, once committed to make a change in the sales process, it will take a minimum of 30 days to see results. Many times the problem you think you have is not actually the problem you have. Therefore, it is important to seek advice from colleagues, bosses, friends and partners.

In order to beat this roadblock, it is important to be patient and identify problems in the sales process that is bigger than you think they are.

#4 Sales Roadblock: Do Not Procrastinate

Normally, salespeople wait until a deadline is approaching or their boss is on their backs to get serious about selling. Sales professionals need to understand that clients buy when they are ready to buy and not when the salesperson is ready to sell. One of the keys to sales success is starting early and understanding the buyer’s purchase cycles. Stay ahead of the curve.

To beat this roadblock, one has to make plans to work hard months in advance, not days before a sales deadline. Therefore, work to be efficient in time management.

#5 Sales Roadblock: Seek Out Training

Honestly, most sales professionals lack sufficient sales training. What are you doing as a salesperson to grow your skill sets every day? Most serious sales professionals look to improve every single day. Do you read sales blogs? Have you hired a sales coach? Have you done sales training?

Sometimes to improve yourself, you have to go beyond the company.

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Ryan Dohrn

Ryan Dohrn, CEO of Brain Swell Media LLC

Ryan Dohrn is an Emmy award winning TV producer, has overseen over 3,000 Web site builds, is a nationally acclaimed speaker, has been featured in USA Today, on ABC, CBS and FOX TV stations, on Forbes.com and has personally impacted millions of dollars in online and related media revenues for media companies large and small.

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