Your Sales Team Doesn’t Have a Sales Problem.

 

It Has a Conversation Problem.

If you’d asked me twenty years ago what stopped most sales teams performing, I’d probably have given you the same answer that most people in sales would have given. I’d have said they needed more training, better systems, more confidence or maybe a bit more motivation.

Now, don’t get me wrong, all of those things can help. But over the years I’ve realised they’re very rarely the real problem.

The reason I know that is because I kept seeing exactly the same thing happen.

I worked with a window company and every time I went in, things improved. Sales picked up, people had more confidence, morale was better and the whole place just felt different. I’d spend the day with the team, we’d work on their conversations, we’d look at how they were engaging with customers and I’d leave thinking, “Brilliant, that’s gone really well.”

Then I’d go back a few weeks later and it was like I’d never been there.

Sales had dipped again. The atmosphere had changed. The pressure was back. Everyone was focused on hitting targets and wondering why the numbers weren’t where they wanted them to be.

The first couple of times it happened, I assumed I hadn’t done a good enough job. I started questioning my own training. Maybe I needed to explain things differently. Maybe I needed to spend more time on closing techniques or objection handling. Maybe the team just needed another day with me.

But after watching the same cycle repeat itself over and over again, I realised I was asking completely the wrong question.

The issue wasn’t what happened while I was there.

The issue was what happened after I’d left.

So instead of watching the salespeople, I started watching the managers. I listened to what was being talked about in meetings. I watched what people were being praised for and what they were being challenged on. That’s when I finally saw it.

While I was there, everyone was talking about customers.

As soon as I left, everyone went back to talking about numbers.

Now, before anyone thinks I’m saying numbers don’t matter, let me stop you there because they absolutely do. Every business has targets. Every business needs profit. Every business has to know what’s in the pipeline.

But here’s the thing, the numbers tell you what has happened, they don’t tell you WHY it happened.

And that’s where so many businesses get stuck.

Every Monday morning there’s a sales meeting somewhere in the country where somebody is asking, “How many calls did you make? How many appointments have you booked? How many quotes have gone out? What’s your conversion rate looking like?”

They’re all sensible questions, but they’re not the questions that improve sales performance.

The questions that improve sales performance sound very different.

“What did we learn about our customers this week?”

“What stopped people buying?”

“Did we really understand what they were trying to achieve?”

“Were we actually the right company to help them?”

Because here’s what I’ve learnt after spending more than twenty-five years in business. Businesses don’t improve sales by teaching people how to sell. They improve sales by teaching people how to listen.

That might sound obvious, but think about how much sales training is built around talking. It consists of subjects like:-

• How to open.
• How to present.
• How to handle objections.
• How to close.

It’s all about what the salesperson says and very little of it is about what the customer is saying.

And yet, every customer is telling us exactly what we need to know if we’re prepared to slow down long enough to listen.

That’s why I’ve never really believed that sales is about persuasion. I know that’s what a lot of people teach, but it isn’t what I’ve seen in the real world.

The best salespeople I’ve ever met aren’t brilliant because they’ve got the perfect script or because they know some clever closing technique. They’re brilliant because customers trust them, and customers trust them because they feel heard.

That’s a completely different skill.

People don’t buy because they were sold to.

They buy because they felt understood.

The more I thought about that window company, the more I realised that the sales team were never really the problem. They were working in an environment where every conversation eventually came back to one thing… the numbers.

When that’s the culture, salespeople naturally start chasing the sale instead of understanding the customer. They start listening for buying signals instead of listening to the person sitting opposite them. They become so focused on the destination that they stop paying attention to the journey.

And that’s why the improvements never lasted.

The training worked but the culture didn’t.

In the end I walked away from that client. It wasn’t an easy decision because I liked the people and I knew the business had potential. But I also knew that no amount of sales training was ever going to create lasting change if the leadership only measured results and never changed the conversations that created those results in the first place.

That experience changed the way I look at sales forever.

In fact, I’d go as far as saying I don’t really think most businesses have a sales problem at all.

I think they have a conversation problem.

Sometimes it’s a leadership problem because leaders create the culture.

Sometimes it’s a management problem because managers coach the wrong behaviours.

Sometimes it’s a process problem because the customer journey has been designed around the business instead of the customer.

But very rarely is it simply a sales problem.

That’s one of the reasons I created The Heart of the Sale. Not because I wanted another sales methodology with a catchy name, but because I became convinced that sustainable sales performance comes from putting the customer back at the centre of every conversation.

For me it’s never been about sell, sell, sell.

It’s always been about serve, serve, serve.

When you genuinely want to understand someone’s situation before you even think about your solution, something changes. The conversation becomes easier. The pressure disappears. Trust grows naturally. Sometimes you discover you’re exactly the right person to help them. Sometimes you discover you’re not.

And here’s the interesting thing.

Customers trust you more when you’re prepared to tell them you’re not the right fit than when you’re trying to convince them that you are.

So the next time somebody tells you your business has a sales problem, I’d encourage you not to rush out and book another sales course.

Pause for a moment and ask yourself a different question.

Are our people struggling to sell……or have we simply forgotten how to listen?

Because in my experience, that’s where real sales performance begins.