Sales Tips & Techniques Blog

Selling Strategy: Where have all my quota busting salespeople gone?

This is a common complaint that we hear from sales leaders. The reality is that they haven't gone anywhere. It's their client-base that has changed, and sales reps are still selling using the outdated skills and tactics that helped them to high levels of success.

For example, in response to a near empty pipeline a sales leaders at a Fortune 50 global software company urged their sales reps to "move up the client's value chain" and "sell value." The intent was for salespeople to start having business-based conversations with executive-level buyers rather than with technical buyers in the IT department. But in an off-the-record conversation, a state sales manager said, "that sounds great, but the problem for us is that those people don't want to talk about software." The sales force was adept at selling on the basis of product features, but could not offer insights into the business issues that executives cared about. Mandating a change in selling strategy is a futile exercise unless reps are trained to sell differently. The source of the pipeline problem was easy to trace: The company's clients were asking the 2009 questions and they were decreasing their IT spending as a result. But only a few perceptive managers realised that the selling approach used by the sales force was making the problem exponentially worse.

Huthwaite's work with this company began with the heads of each line of business and the regional marketing team. We helped them arrive at new value propositions that are relevant to senior level buyers in today's economy. Our next step will be to provide the sales force with the necessary skills to use these new value propositions to engage the interest of executive level buyers.

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