Symptoms:
The silence was deafening. Both Valerie and her prospect sat there looking at each other waiting for the other person to speak first. Valerie had finished her presentation of the new products' features and benefits and was expecting the Director of Operations to give her some indication of how well she had done.
Symptoms:
Sam has been in sales for her entire career. She knows she does well enough as she has climbed the ranks through various companies, but she tends to plateau with medium accounts. Sam has yet to earn some of the major accounts and or territories that make salespeople’s careers.
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:
Melody and her boss just couldn't understand why she continued to struggle to close business. She was a very outgoing person who was extremely well liked by her customers. She went out of her way to be friendly to everyone and appeared to possess a good knowledge of her product and the selling process. Her failure to excel was confusing everyone.
Symptoms:
Mary was on one of her first sales calls as a new rep and the prospect, with his first question, invited her straight onto the Buyers Bus: "Tell me about your company and what you do".
Symptoms:
Linda was frustrated by her prospect's unwillingness to make a decision. Her prospect said he needed some time to digest the three options outlined in her proposal before making a decision.
Symptoms:
Valentine looked at his schedule and realized he is set to go visit a favorite client, or maybe a prospect, or maybe even still a suspect, this week. He absolutely loved spending time with this person and company.
The economy is not something that can be ignored. Perhaps on the personal side, people can ignore the bigger concept of the economy, but maybe not their own budget needs. On the business side, the economy is always in the picture. Let’s take a few minutes to review what might be impacting longer sales cycles and how strong business development professionals make the most of it.
