A few weeks ago, I conducted a survey of sales people, asking what the hardest part of their role was. I received lots of different responses, which I attempted to categorise. Lead generation and long sales cycles dominated but internal issues accounted for an alarming number of responses. This is part one of a deeper review of the responses that I received.
Lead Generation
Lead generation was the most common response with 20% of all responses. Interestingly, they were also the shortest responses that I received. There was no need for further explanation, just simple responses such as “Finding new leads in the current market” and “Find New leads”.
This is probably not a surprise. Businesses have grown and developed so much over the last 40 years that technology is everywhere. Most companies have some technology to help them with everything that they do. Finding a company that has a technology hole in their workflow is therefore much more difficult. Opportunities tend to come from replacing an existing technology rather than being a first supplier. As a result, opportunities are harder to find.
Added to that, simply contacting people is much more difficult despite the prevalence of technology. Most companies have moved away from desk phones and receptionists so you need to contact people via their mobile which is impossible without their number. While you can guess someone’s email address, emails are very easy to ignore. Even people that would like your product will tend to ignore your email when they are busy and will only respond when chased.
Of course, generating new leads is critical to any business and there is a constant need to do so. However, it is definitely getting more difficult which leads to response number 2!
Dealing with rejection
A few people stated that dealing with rejection was the hardest thing about their job. Both commented that they needed to grow a thick skin to deal with it.
As human beings, rejection is difficult to take, even when it is part of the job. No matter how thick our skin is, it hurts a little. Constant rejection, as can happen at times, can be very difficult to take which is why roles that only focus on opening doors are so demanding.
Working across all stages of the sales process at the same time is much more satisfying as it is possible to balance your work between lead generation and closing. Closing is obviously the best part of the process so can provide the highs to go with the lows of rejection!
Balancing your workload
All of that being said, a number of people commented on the difficulty of finding the balance between strategic longer term sales engagement and direct short term sales and consistently doing all the things that you need to do to get the business, prospecting, calls, meetings, engagements etc.
Finding the balance can be difficult as there is a tendency to focus on the immediate short term needs or closing deals. However, it is important to keep generating opportunities to fill the pipeline for when you have closed all your existing deals. It does not necessarily have to be doing something every day and maybe not even every week but every month you should ensure that you are working across all stages of the sales process, to generate leads and close deals so that you have a consistent revenue stream.