The 5 most common sales problems and their solutions

Sales team acts as the pillar of every enterprise that supports the business revenue cycle and also keeps it running flawlessly for consistent performance.

The responsibility of the sales team is to ensure that they identify the right business opportunity in the market and approach it with an engineered plan.

But sometimes even though with the structured planning, enterprises are not able to achieve the kind of result they expected, and this is due to sales problems in the business that creates a gap between the executed plan and the delivered result.

The sales problems are faced by both the mega enterprises that cover the larger market area, as well as the small and medium businesses that have a shorter market radius.

The effect of the sales problems is more prominent and daunting for the small and medium businesses as they have limited resources as well as capital available with them for handling the worst case business scenarios.

According to a business survey,

47% of the small and medium businesses consider the sales problems to be the major challenge in their growth plan.

There could be many problems that can slow down the sales process of an enterprise but following are the most common ones any business will come across in the sales journey.

The 5 most common sales problems of every enterprise

1) Not being able to find quality leads

There’s a famous saying that “Quality is always better than quantity” and the same methodology applies to your business when it comes to attracting newer lead prospects.

But this idea of quality is not prominent among the businesses, causing the businesses difficulties in maintaining the revenue cycle and that is an indication of a sales problem.

According to a business survey,

Only 15.5% of the businesses say that they are effective in coming with a sustaining lead scoring model.

Solution for earning quality leads:

The main purpose of acquiring a lead is to convert them and thus it needs to be a selective process while choosing the leads on a certain category or sections.

In simple words, you need to dig up deeper in the buyer personas and prepare a sales funnel, putting the lead prospects on different levels of the funnel.

This way the whole approach to finding quality leads is sorted and paved in the direction so that they get converted.

2) Mismanagement of leads

When a certain lead is received by an enterprise the next step is to analyze and store the data associated with that lead in a location where it is easily accessible.

Lead mismanagement gives rise to many confusions that need to be addressed at the start of strategizing a plan, or else it will cause your enterprise to lose precious lead prospects and also problems in the sales department. 

As per the business survey,

Businesses waste around 71% of the leads that come through digital medium.

Solution for managing leads effectively:

The path towards successfully acquiring leads and converting them into customers consists of a structured layer of processes and they are as follows:

  • Generating leads
  • Tracking leads
  • Nurturing of leads
  • Passing leads toward the sales team

The crucial part of successful lead management is to organize them as per the priority along with labelling them on the basis of responses.

This streamlines the process of lead follow-ups, saving you both the time and energy required to be invested in a single customer.

Opting for the profound automation ERP software such as ChiefEx makes the management process even simpler.

3) Less time on sales and more time on administrative tasks

The administrative tasks in the enterprise consume most part of the business time, leaving less time for the sales team towards solving the sales problem or just enhancing the sales workflow.

Solution for saving much time for the sales team:

To drive enterprise sales effectively, it is very much necessary that your team is completely focused on enhancing sales operations.

But businesses tend to invest more time in trivial administrative tasks rather than building a structured sales funnel and moving the prospect down that funnel.

Such administrative tasks consume the precious time of the enterprise, affecting the lead acquisition and giving rise to various sales problems.

With the help of automated software, every administrative task can be streamlined effectively and the saved time can be used in growing business sales, boosting the revenue cycle.

4) Collaborative disruptions between the marketing team and the sales team

The sales team of every enterprise regardless of the size and domain must have the ability to work as well as collaborate with cross-functional partners to bring value to the customers.

Not having an effective collaborative structure within the business ecosystem prolongs the business’s crucial procedures and thus delays in delivery of the service.

Solution for effective collaboration between the marketing and sales team: A centralized location for saving all your crucial business data enables every department to access it whenever required, fast-tracking the business process efficiently.

With the help of high-tech ERP software such as ChiefEx, this process becomes seamless and thus enhances the collaboration of not only between the marketing and sales team but throughout the enterprise.

5) Ineffective sales pitch

A sales pitch plays a crucial role in bringing majestic sales growth for the business if done in a precise and profound manner.

If your prospect is not able to understand your product or service then the pitching is the main sales problem rather than the entire process.

Solution for effective sales pitching:

The sales pitch must be precise and entirely pointed in the persuading direction.

It must be more than clear to the user.

The problems of the user have to be addressed clearly.

And finally the explanation of how your product or service can make a difference.