The Top Three Reasons Your Sales Team Struggles to Close Deals

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It’s no secret it’s harder than ever to stand out and differentiate from your competition. Today’s sales teams are facing three major obstacles in their path to closing more deals, and ultimately revenue growth.

#1 Compressed Selling TimeCompressed Selling Time Technology has enabled people to glean more education and insights without the assistance or guidance of salespeople. A 2020 Gartner study demonstrated that 83% of the prospect’s buying journey is completed before the salesperson is invited in. Less selling time prohibits effective investigation of need and trust building, putting all sellers at a disadvantage and making “selling” all about responding to requests, reacting, and order taking.

Your prospect is 70% of the way through their buyer’s journey before they even talk to you. This leaves you no room for error when working to make an impact and gain access. And, if you aren’t losing sales to competitors, chances are you are losing them to indecision. As many as 60% of all leads are lost to nothing at all, the prospect deciding not to buy anything. With compressed selling time, the pressure is on to quickly make a lasting impact.

#2 CommoditizationCommoditization Absence of any perceived value, making it so that price becomes the only determining factor. Whether there is real differentiation or not, if the prospect’s brain cannot or will not distinguish this differentiation, it doesn’t matter.

Your prospect has total access to all of your direct competitors right at their fingertips. To you prospect you all look the same, sound the same, and act the same.

This is bad for your prospects because they deserve to know the real differences so they can make better buying choices. When you can’t clearly differentiate, you’re either forced to play games with your pricing or you’re more likely to become part of the 60% of sales that are lost to no decision at all.

#3 Consensus Decision Making

It used to be a single decision-maker could close the deal. Today, decision making teams are as large as five or more people. According to a 2016 Fortune Magazine article, sales cycle times have grown 22% in the last five years.

The process is slowing down, with more buyers in the mix–all freshly armed with information they skimmed from the Internet–using this purchase to play out their competing interests. If you aren’t engaging enough to make them reach a decision, you’re quickly being forgotten and reprioritized. Time kills all deals.

Win More Sales with A Better Pitch

You can’t deny the sales process has changed fundamentally in the last decade. We’ve reached a pace of change that is turning relationships, tradition, and previous routes to sales upside down. You can’t rely on outdated techniques and tools to grow your revenue in today’s accelerated business environment.

And better tools start with neuro-science based messaging techniques that speak to your prospect’s brain to help you stand out and differentiate fast.

  • Understanding how your prospect’s brain really makes decisions allows you to overcome compressed sales times
  • Your pitch needs to quickly lock down the answer to “Why you?” with brain-friendly visuals and proofs to drive emotional lift
  • Successful, brain-friendly pitches unlock really good conversations that lead to closed deals

You can start winning more deals with sales presentations that actually engage your prospects and position you as the only solution.

Let’s talk about winning more deals for your sales team with a NeuroPitch presentation >>

Craft Breweries Are Owning Their Why

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It’s Octoberfest in Michigan, which happens to have more craft breweries than 46 of the 50 States. You can’t throw a stone here without hitting a brewery. And it’s rare to see anyone picking up a Bud these days.

While overall beer consumption has been reported as down, the craft beer industry is booming. It has exceeded all growth expectations and proves it can hold its own against the beer giants like Anheuser-Busch and Miller-Coors – who, by the way, are trying to buy up as many small, craft breweries as they can to help keep themselves in the race.  With nearly 70,000 craft brewery employees across the U.S. the numbers have tripled over the last decade. Consumers might be drinking less, but they’re willing to pay 50 percent more for a beverage that stands out and has quality worth every extra cent. 

So why are most craft breweries finding unprecedented success? Because craft breweries have been able to create a unique experience for their consumers. An experience that is rooted in each craft breweries “why”, and one that their most loyal consumers can identify with and rally behind.

Each brewery tells their own story that stands out against others. Whether it be a better taste, unique or new flavors, or how they got their start it’s the reason people travel from store to store looking for their favorite craft brew or make weekend plans to road trip to their favorite breweries to explore a new atmosphere or flavor of the season. It’s why you see people wearing a t-shirt or hat from their brewery of choice – because they feel beer they drink says something about who they are as a person.

In this accelerated age, to stay relevant to your consumers, you must differentiate by showing your real value, which should be rooted in why it is you do what you do. I personally live for the Christmas season when a Michigan brewery, Rochester Mills releases their 12 Days of Christmas pack. The whole family gets involved in trying new flavors and choosing their favorites. And, isn’t that what a brand would hope for? Making consumers feel something and know the producer cares about the product they’re sending out.

Another favorite, not just with Michiganders, but across the U.S. is Founder’s Brewery. Founded in the mid-1990s, in the early 2000s, their business almost failed when their strategy was to follow the crowd and brew the same type of beer as everyone else. It wasn’t until they focused on why they were brewing to begin with that things took a turn. The owners decided to make beer they wanted to drink and created masterpieces that were like nothing else on the market. . In 2014, Founders announced a $35 million expansion to double the production capacity at its Grand Rapids, Michigan headquarters, giving them the capacity to produce 900,000 barrels per year and solidify Founders as one of the premier craft brewing companies in the country. You can see more of their inspiring story here. 

The craft beer industry sets a great example of how organizations that follow their why can stand out and differentiate, even in the most crowded of markets.

Ready to drive your revenue growth by Owning Your Why? We can help let’s talk.