Have you ever had trouble selling ? What did you do about it?

Sonia55

Sales / Selling is important for all of us here,I am very curious to know if you ever had trouble or a phase of low sales that you had to tackle.What did you do about it ?

SteveStrait

Where do I start?
There were so many sales channels/tactics I've used for my business.

I found that early sales channels I used to grow my business in the beginning stopped being effective at a point.
At least for consumer products.

I found that there is a plateau around the $110-130K revenue level.
It might have been psychological but this happened twice on two different businesses.

At the early stages, cold calling independent stores to carry my product have always resulted in the biggest bang for my buck.
I had trouble with it when I started
(sweats, nervousness, not knowing how to handle objections, getting hunged up on...etc)

But I started recording my conversations and something just seemed to click after that.
I kept on improving my approach and my result skyrocketed.

Always a good idea to have an unfiltered view of your processes!

Specialriskterm

I think we all have had periods of time where sales are slow. It really is a people and a numbers business. The more no's you get the closer you are to a yes. Finding ways to market to large numbers of people thru after work events, networking thru friends and current customers, along with marketing efforts thru different means such as social media, e-mailing marketing, etc. will help keep a constant stream of business flowing. Referrals are probably my bread and butter. Go back to your satisfied customers and ask them for names that might make sense for your particular product.

sinGN

I am doing SEO to promote my business and am using business card.

Adam Jones

Give me an example of the approach you would take to explain the features of a product or service to a customer who has trouble understanding them. Describe a selling situation where it was important to obtain good information.Many salespeople work without close supervision.So it's create trouble for them.

Alberto G. Morrison

6 BIGGEST SALES CHALLENGES FACING SALES TEAMS TODAY

(1) Getting A Response From Prospects

(2) Closing Deals

(3) Prospecting Good Leads

(4) Engaging With Decision-Makers 

(5) Avoiding Discounting

(6) Connecting Via The Phone

FIVE COMMON SALES OBSTACLES

Obstacle 1 – Identifying and Communicating with the Decision Maker(s)

Obstacle 2 – Uncovering the Budget

Obstacle 3 – Working with Customers Who Do Not Want to Commit

Obstacle 4 -Understanding the Customer’s Values

Obstacle 5 – Establishing Your Credibility

Andrew Barry

Yes, my business hit a point where all my personal contacts and their referrals were tapped out. So we had to start doing that dreaded sales outreach. We used tools like Leadstream to help automate a LinkedIn outreach for us, and I will say, I was really surprised at how well it worked. I think in 2 months of using it I generated about 12 new leads that were genuinely interested in our business. Now we are in the nurturing phase with those, yet another challenge for start-ups  

Hope that helps? 

Shano

Used local SEO to generate more business inquiries

Tuah Bao

Is the low-sales period short (temporary) or long?

If it is short:
1) It may due to seasonality effect (like holidays, seasons).
2) Heavy promotion this month will lead to lower sales the following month.

If the period is long:
1) Perhaps technology has changed. Try to find out if there are other substitutes emerge in the market.
2) Most people buy just to try (don't expect customers to be loyal to you just because they made the first purchase) and forget about it because there are some other promotions going on at different point of time.]

There are plenty of reasons.