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Many of the obstacles that limit a sales professional’s performance can be identified as either technical obstacles or conceptual obstacles. A technical obstacle occurs when a sales professional is confronted by a situation and they don’t know how to effectively respond. For example, a prospect asks a sales professional “how much does this cost?” The sales professional does not want to discuss price at this time but does not want to alienate the prospect either. How do they keep the prospect happy without discussing the price?
A conceptual issue occurs when a sales professional is confronted by a situation, cognitively knows how to respond, but doesn’t respond in accordance with their cognitive knowledge because another non-supportive (cognitive) belief they possess has greater influence upon them than the cognitive solution which would properly respond to the situation they were confronted with.
For example, suppose our mothers told us repeatedly, when we were young children, to stay away from strangers because some of those strangers could and would “hurt” us. We grow up and find ourselves in a sales profession and are told we need to prospect and call upon strangers to be successful. We cognitively acknowledge the truth of the need to prospect if we are ever going to be successful.
However, when we start calling upon strangers (prospects), we discover that we are often treated poorly. Our memory tapes start playing and we realize that mom was indeed right. Strangers can and often do hurt us. We now have two (2) competing beliefs: We need to call on strangers to be successful and we will get hurt if we do call upon strangers. For some sales professionals, the fear of being “hurt” has more impact upon their prospecting behavior than the fear of being unsuccessful if they don’t prospect.
Technical obstacles are normally easier to correct than conceptual obstacles. The easiest way to deal with technical obstacles is to provide the appropriate training and coaching which will help the sales professional to “know” what to do the next time they are confronted with a particular problem.
Conceptual obstacles are much harder to correct because they require the changing of a “belief” that is ingrained in the sales professional’s mind. For this reason, it is prudent to assess a potential sales professional to ascertain how good or bad their sales belief system is compared to an ideal sales professional.
Dan Kusner, President of Optimum Business Development, LP works with serious sales professionals and business owners who want to target qualified prospects and close more and better business. If you would like to become a more effective sales professional, feel free to call Dan at (724) 325-5698.
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