Instead of making calls, are your salespeople making excuses?  It might happen to even the best members of your sales team from time to time. According to research from Dudley & Goodson, about 40-percent of all career salespeople experience episodes of call reluctance that are serious enough to threaten their careers.

 
But you can’t lump all the call reluctance into the same boat. Here are five of the most common personalities that fall to call reluctance, the symptoms, and the potential fix.

1. Polite Polly: Doesn’t want to intrude on others. Feels like their role is invasive in another professional’s space.

The next target name and title for your new B-team salesperson pops up on his screen. He takes a quick look at the company web site and then punches “dial”. His conversation starts the exact same way his last conversation did. He doesn’t have any context for how your company can help his target, instead using a “One Conversation Fits Most” approach.

How much better would his sales numbers be if he could cater each conversation to the person on the other end of the phone?

1. Research the company as it relates to what you’re selling: It’s not enough to get an overview of the target, for example, understanding that they manufacture and sell lenses. Your team needs to get a quick overview that is relevant to the product that they want to sell. Using recent articles about the company might have tremendous hints for their needs (for example, if they have new management or if they recently opened a new location). In addition, current articles about their industry might point to pain that they’re having that your company can address (for example, if there is a huge market for a new size of lenses and they are going to need to ramp up production). If you can start your conversation with a relevant bridge between what you’re selling and what they need, you are much more likely to engage a sale… than with a generic conversation.

How are some companies able to generate consistently higher margins than their competitors?  Take an organization like Tiffany & Co. jewelers.  The silver, gold, platinum and diamonds are the same as the next jeweler's… right? 

Tiffany & Co. has a "story" that eclipses the product inside.  This story which is based on tradition, quality, workmanship and a superior customer experience is responsible for a premium margin, the highest industry averages of return customer purchases and salespeople that earn more than their peers.  Many other factors contribute to Tiffany & Co.'s success… but the Tiffany & Co. story, represented by that little pale blue box is iconic.  It "is" the brand.  

Welcome!

ShadeTree's mission is to help sales professionals be more successful.

Over the coming months we will be discussing the following topics in more detail: 

• Empowering salespeople to be more effective
• Having better sales conversations for improved results
• Equipping the salesforce with the right tools to be successful
• Ways to optimize and simplify salesforce.com for sales results and measurement

Please accept our invitation to provide your thoughts and feedback as a contributor to this sales community.

We look forward to sharing our experience and learning from you.

Best Regards!

Cameron Randolph