Many times when salespeople fail to make a sale on a new prospect, they walk away not knowing exactly what went wrong. The answer generally lies in a hurdle they were not able to clear or a sign-off that caused the sale to fail.
You and your company have certain internal standards to meet when you offer to sell a product, a service, or a solution. You know what hurdles you have to clear and what signoffs you have to get, in order to get a deal done. You make your offers routinely and have systems in place to expedite the internal approval needed for a given bid or proposal.
Your prospect has hurdles to clear and sign-offs to get as well.
It’s usually more complex on the buying side than on the selling side.
Often the prospect firm is less prepared. They make purchases every day, of course, but each of those purchases is different, and so the hurdles are different. If this is a new solution or you have not done business together, the hurdles will be higher and more numerous. Some common hurdles are things like all important decision-influencers are on board, the timeline to execute is reasonable, and pricing has been discussed with the ultimate decision-maker.
For a list of common hurdles to clear be sure you create a buyable solution, click here.
John Henley is the Chief Operating Officer at The Center for Sales Strategy
