9 Critical Sales Challenges and Solutions For Remote Sales Teams In This COVID-19 World

In business, all salespersons wish to end their months celebrating their wins on a happy note. But unfortunately, for most of the people in sales, their months end with a sense of utter disappointment, filled with exasperated regrets and so are often plagued with challenges that affect their performance and results every month.
The issue over here is that sales reps mostly overlook these challenges in sales and continue selling that brings them back to the same inadequate sales results every month. 
We have observed that no salesperson (even the top performers) are exempted from challenges in sales but the difference between the top-performing sales reps with the other members in their team is that the top performers in sales addresses their sales challenges rather than disregarding them. 
Therefore, as one of the leading vendors of sales CRM tools we have highlighted some of the most common challenges that sales reps face while selling their offerings remotely along with the solutions needed for tackling them during these long-drawn COVID times. 

COMMON SALES CHALLENGES AND SOLUTIONS 

Sales challenges and solutions # 1 

Competing With Competitors 

In the present times, more so because of this COVID-19 pandemic and global economic meltdown, all markets across the world has turned into a battlefield where brands and businesses are doing all it takes to surpass their nearest competitors. 
Therefore, right from offering freebies to lowing prices, most companies still surviving in this COVID-affected marketplace are trying various strategies to attract their customers, whereby potential buyers are picking such opportunities and using them as a shield to get their products and services at a better price than ever before. 
Hence, most of the sales reps get to hear this statement like “[X Competitor] is providing 3 months free subscription for their services.” or “[Y Competitor] is offering their products at a much lower price.”
Now, most sales reps go blank once they face such an answer or take impulsive decisions that undercut and sabotage their profits. 

Solutions

 

• Map out your competitor’s weaknesses and strengths after doing an in-depth competitive analysis of their brand and its offerings.
• Evaluate how your brand is better than your competitors and explain that to your potential customers.
• Share testimonials and case studies of your satisfied and loyal customers who chose your offerings over the competitors.

Sales challenges and solutions # 2 

Lack Of Time For Selling

Most sales reps have a very long to-do list every day. Right from collecting details about their potential buyers to drafting sales emails and updating records in their easy to use CRM tools – there are a plethora of jobs that sales reps must accomplish in a day. 
Additionally, if things are not organized, more time is wasted in the search for finding appropriate information, and so sales reps most often complain that they do not find enough time to focus on strategizing and selling their offerings. 

Solutions 

 

• Use a Sales Force Automation (SFA) tool found in most CRM solutions to put most of your tasks on autopilot.
• Use business growth tools that provide profile enrichment features and find vital information of your prospects fetched automatically by the software
• Create and reuse email templates instead of drafting each emails times and over again.
• Keep track of your sales activities using sales reports and thereafter prioritize your tasks for the day.
• Choose an all in one CRM solution to maintain all your customer-related data instead of scribbling them on papers and notepads. 

Sales challenges and solutions # 3

Finding Response From The Prospect 

Most sales reps face this challenge too often, whereby, most prospective leads stop responding after a few initial contacts, which makes sales reps to get demotivated by their prospect’s silence. 
In this scenario, sales reps most often abandon the lead and start focusing on another prospect and hence fail to convert maximum leads in their sales pipeline. 

Solutions

 

• Create a sales cadence and consistently follow-up without giving up. To help you in this, you can use business growth technology and tools that allow sales reps to create text sequences and emails for automating the follow-ups.
• Brainstorm interesting email subject lines and content to increase your prospect’s response rate.
• Try to connect with other employees in your prospect’s company (in B2B selling).
• Try to get connected with the prospect at different hours, so that you can find the best time to call or send emails to your prospects as per their convenience and need. 
• Use different channels apart from emails and calls to connect with your prospects like social media platforms or simple traditional text messages over the phone.

Sales challenges and solutions # 4

Finding Prospects Foot-Dragging During The Negotiation 

We all have observed that most of the opportunities while selling get lost during the negotiation phase in the sales process. This is because sales reps often find several prospects that are unwilling to compromise or find common grounds. 
At times, as the prospect’s reluctance might even annoy the sales reps, in isolated cases they even end up venting out their anger in an unpleasant way. 

Solutions

 

• Think twice before you respond to your customer’s objections and stay calm during the negotiation process.
• Explore and research several negotiation tactics to deal with reluctant prospects.
• Identify the pressure points of the prospects and make them visualize the consequences of not addressing their issues right now.
• Primarily quote a high price. Thereafter offer a low price with limited features. Now while the prospect is swinging between these two offers make the actual proposal to the prospect. 

Sales challenges and solutions # 5

Inability To Handle Rejection Or Criticism

Most salespeople cannot bear to hear a “NO” and neither can they accept any criticism from their prospects.  In fact, these two inabilities even affect their next deal, get them demoralized as they cannot focus on communication arising from the disappointment from the criticism or rejection they faced from their prospective lead.

Solutions

 

• Prepare and practice a good response when you hear a “NO”.
• Work on your Emotional Intelligence (EQ) skills and do not get emotionally hijacked.
• Request your manager to conduct a mock session for preparing you to handle any rejection during the sales calls.
• Build a lot of opportunities in your sales pipeline so that a few rejections do not affect your monthly or quarterly targets. 

Sales challenges and solutions # 6

Ineffectual Sales Training

Even though most organizations promise but they fail to provide adequate training to their salespersons for handling the smart buyers of modern times. Hence the dearth of training is the primary cause that results in low sales productivity which makes most sales reps face troubles meeting their sales goals.

Solutions

 

• Request management to invest in ongoing training, after finding areas where training is required for finding improvements. 
• Attend live webinars to learn from industry experts in your field.
• Ask sales managers to provide regular performance feedback.

Sales challenges and solutions # 7

Incapability To Track Deals

Your sales pipeline might have several deals, but regrettably, most of them get stalled for a very long time at some stage in the pipeline and thereafter ultimately gets lost through the crack. This is because several sales reps have no visibility into their sales pipelines, which results in many lost opportunities. 

Solutions

Implement the best business CRM software for your organization that will…

• Provide your sales reps clear visibility into each stage of the sales pipeline.
• Allow your sales teams to segment the prospects and prioritize high-value deals and track their progress effortlessly.
• Keep your sales reps updated with every activity of the deal. 

Sales challenges and solutions # 8

The Dearth Of Time For Prospecting 

Prospecting has always remained a very important task in the sales process. Nevertheless, most salespersons find prospecting most challenging and fail to dedicate sufficient time for conducting this activity. Therefore, it is imperative that sales reps must make cold sales calls regularly which can get them acquainted with a lot of lucrative prospects. 

Solutions

 

• Mark a stipulated time to make cold calls every day.
• Use a power dialer and integrate it into your sales CRM to save time and boost efficiency.
• Do not ignore cold calling for any other errands.

Sales challenges and solutions # 9

Inability To Answer Prospective Lead’s Questions

Modern buyers are extremely well-informed and smart since they are mostly updated with the latest trends in the market. This is the reason modern buyers ask a lot of questions, whereby many sales reps just go blank and become unable to answer their issues. Now, if you as a sale rep is facing this problem, here are certain things that you can to overcome this.

Solutions

 

• Primarily ensure that you have good knowledge about your brand and your offerings. 
• Make a list of questions that you face often and get prepared for it in advance.
• Ensure a mock call session with your sales managers before you pick up the phone. 

Conclusion

Without any doubt, sales as a career is a challenging field. However, using the right sales techniques and business growth ideas sales can be tackled. 
Remember you must always ensure that as a sales rep you do not overlook the weak areas that lead to poor results in sales. 
Hence amidst this COVID-19 pandemic, if you are into remote selling use tools that allow you to create customized sales reports as per your businesses’ specific requirements that can help you in managing your sales effectively and despite this flagging market find revenue growth.