Five Reasons for the Disconnect During Sales Prospecting

I uncovered five possible reasons for the disconnect while sales prospecting. Here they are, along with some sales prospecting techniques you can employ if this happens to you. 1. Lack of influence. I only had contact with one person for this opportunity. And he wasn’t signing the checks. While he initially was an advocate and had some level of influence over the decision, he wasn’t the decision maker. Solution: If your connections within the account don’t have decision-making power, take action. Request a proposal review that includes the decision maker, or at a minimum, a discovery conversation with them. It might sound like: “Now that we’ve reviewed a few options, I typically present to the decision committee. Can we work together on that follow-up?” 2. Unidentified intelligence. Sometimes there’s behind-the-scenes intelligence you don’t have at your disposal. Bias happens, and individuals at the prospective client may be giving preferential treatment to your competitors in the form of better intelligence. Even when you ask the best questions, you may not receive relevant answers. Solution: Staying aware of this possibility is crucial, but how do you know what you don’t know? Try asking a question like: “Is there anything I haven’t covered in our conversation, that I should be asking? I want to make sure I’m getting to all of your most important decision items.” An additional solution: do your homework with the other relationships you have in the account – if you have a high level of trust with those relationships, you’ll likely get better intelligence. 3. Too much or too little. Do you know how your fees compare with the competition? In this situation, my proposed fees may have been too low. While a typical point-of-view is to find ways to lower fees, this may have worked against me. Solution: Fees that are too low don’t inspire confidence in your buyer, and lost confidence may translate to lost opportunity. Conduct research and understand pricing on previous or similar solutions. 4. Conflict avo