9 Reasons Why Sales Teams Struggle With Sales Results | Salesforce Guide

Sales. Yes, it is a tough job. One bad month and there are hundreds of questions to answer.

No matter what the market reality is you’ve got to hit those numbers!

There are 3 key factors that determine sales success:

1. Sales Planning
2. Sales Messaging
3. Sales Qualification Process

Beyond these sales areas, there are some key challenges every salesperson faces.

1. Poor Sales Pipeline Management

Being unaware of every detail in your sales pipeline leads you and your team to lose control of sales execution. With the use of Sales analytics, you can easily track key metrics and gain complete visibility into your sales pipeline.

2. Unrealistic Forecasting

If sales strategies aren’t underpinned by data, it leads to guesswork and unrealistic targets. Analyzing historic data and setting realistic goals will improve the accuracy and credibility of forecasts.

3. Underutilization of CRM

Let’s face it. CRMs can be complex and difficult to work with. This leads to poor user adoption and time consuming workarounds. Most companies struggle with underutilization of their CRM.

Fun fact: sales teams that utilize CRMs have access to a goldmine of information and perform better.

4. No Alignment Between Sales & Marketing

And the twain shall never meet! To achieve sales success, it is vital that sales and marketing teams work closely together. If marketing and sales aren’t in sync, this might affect sales numbers intensely.

5. Relying on Spreadsheet for Analytics

Conventional sales reports and analytics are like juggling with a whole number of Excel sheets. No more struggling with excel sheets; there are amazing options like Salesforce that is a powerhouse of vital customer/prospect information.

6. Low Visibility of Data

Is your entire sales team able to view the status of each lead or prospect? If not, it’s time to invest in a sales automation tool and CRM like Salesforce to align your entire sales team with the progress of sales goals. A centralized view gives more visibility into pertinent data to the entire team.

7. Difficulty in Qualifying Leads

Life is too short to nurture cold leads. Sales reps struggle with poorly qualified leads as prospecting and segmenting leads manually is tough. A software like Salesforce Pardot has lead prospecting, scoring and segmenting features that makes lead qualification a breeze.

Check out another amazing blog by DemandBlue here: Marketing Automation - The Secret Ingredient Behind Sales Success (you read that right!)

8. Mismanagement of multi-touch campaigns

It takes an average of eight touches to get an initial meeting with a new prospect. Communicating with prospects across various touchpoints through multiple channels is next to impossible without opting for an automated solution. Yet, a lot many companies overburden sales reps with outdated processes.

9. Marketing software is now table stakes for your campaigns

An effective sales team isn’t just made of smart individuals but also the tools that support and enable selling. Sales and marketing automation tools like Pardot will help your sales team to segment and reach out to only best-fit accounts, track key metrics, deliver messages to prospects in a compelling way and gives the ammo your sales team need to conquer sales goals.