Sales Career Training Institute

Common Problems
That Salespeople Encounter
And Reasons Prospects Don't Buy

In 1999, the Sales Career Training Institute began to conduct a series of surveys, which our organization continues to build upon even today to keep up with trends in marketing and sales. The purpose of the surveys was to determine the biggest problems that salespeople were encountering as well as the main reasons why buyers weren’t buying.


7 Common Problems That Salespeople Encounter

Following is a summary of the seven most prevalent problems encountered by salespeople as reported by sales managers and salespeople:

1) Our sales cycle is too long.

2) Our closing ratio of proposals to actual sales is too low.

3) Too often we are dealing with prospects that don’t have decision-making power.

4) Our prospects use our quotes to get better prices from our competition.

5) We constantly must compete on price and so we must discount to win business.

6) We can’t get enough qualified leads.

7) The prospects we do get into the pipeline never seem to develop into actual sales.

These are all very common problems that salespeople encounter, and we will address each of these issues and many more as we delve into the FEAR Selling System. But we can only begin to understand how to solve these problems by studying buyer attitudes and behavior.

5 Reasons Prospects Don't Buy

Following is a summary of the five most prevalent reasons for not buying as reported by prospective buyers:

1) I get worried when salespeople don’t take the time to get to know my specific problem.

2) I don’t feel that salespeople have my best interests in mind.

3) I’m afraid that they won’t be able to deliver what they say they can deliver.

4) My job is on the line, so I can’t trust new vendors.

5) I don’t trust salespeople that talk at me instead of with me. As you can see, the majority of the answers to this survey revolve around fear and mistrust.

Our research on buyer behavior and attitudes – as well as many other studies that we will reference throughout FEAR Selling – reveals that people buy emotionally rather than intellectually.

The decision to buy or not to buy is more subjective than you might think. We have found that despite bidding processes and return-on-investment analyses that your prospects might demand, they typically buy based on emotions.