As she looked at the clock and saw it was already 4:15, all Patty could think about was how the day flew by and how little she actually accomplished. Her planned “office day” ended up being an exercise in wasting time and not controlling her schedule.
Having earned a small commission check last month from her sales job, Marta was doing her best to replace her old refrigerator and had already hit the local appliance stores, as well as a few of the Big Box outlets.
Symptoms:
After a long sales process finally appeared to be coming to a successful conclusion, Paul was breathing a sigh of relief until his client decided he wanted to extract some sweat from Paul for the win. Just when he thought it was over and done, the regional vice president chimed in with one last contract change that he claimed was a deal breaker if it wasn't accommodated.
Symptoms:
Most of Mike's potential accounts seem to be unable to make a decision on their own regarding his service. They claim they have responsibility, listen to his presentation, but then let him know there are "others" who have final decision-making authority. He is frustrated by this situation and usually just makes his presentation, anyway, hoping for the best. As a result, his closing ratio is poor and his sales cycle is exceedingly long.
Donna hated feeling like this. As hard as she tried, she couldn’t figure out what she was supposed to do when she got back to the office after being out for a couple of days making calls on new prospects and checking up on some existing clients. Her to do list had a bunch of things scribbled on it, but Donna didn’t know which items were most important or when the people she had been talking to were expecting her to follow up.
Diane returned from the product demo certain that the features and benefits she shared with her prospect had wowed them. The buyer nodded when Diane asked if the product fit into the product categories they offered to their customer base, and everyone else that sat in on the meeting told her how much they liked what she had presented. She felt as good about this call as she had in a long time, but now six weeks later there was still no purchase order and the prospect had gone radio silent. How did their excitement turn into Diane's frustration?
Like many business development people these days, Robin won't be going on her appointments tomorrow by herself. This time she is bringing Rich, and he is the VP of Sales from one of her largest vendors.
One thing was certain: Derek was going to get an earful when he mustered the courage to tell his biggest customer that the truckload of material he was expecting was going to arrive three weeks late.
Bob was exhausted after seeing over 15 accounts in the past week. He had talked about football, politics, family and even some industry news in order to get the client engaged in a conversation that might give him an opening to pitch his latest and greatest widget.
