Show notes
Anytime there is any sort of issue in your business that’s not quite going the way it should, don't sabotage your sales success. Instead, just ask yourself, is this because the process that I have in place is not working? Or is it because the person who is supposed to be following the process just didn’t do it?
David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and will be discussing How Businesses Sabotage their Sales. Welcome back, Kevin.
Kevin: Good to see you, David. How you been?
David: Been doing great. It's good to see you too.
Kevin: Yeah, for sure. I'm excited to talk about this. So, sabotaging sales, what do you mean by that, when you say businesses are sabotaging their sales?
David: You know, I had some experiences recently and I'm like, did they intend to do this? Is this what they were trying to do? Did they set out to do this when they were doing it. One of the experiences I had recently was I was going to buy a pair of earbuds, right?
And there's a particular brand of earbuds that I like. It's not the ones that would normally leap to mind. It's another one. But a good brand, they work really well. And I got a text from them saying that they were having a sale. And I was like, okay, cool. Maybe I'll buy an extra pair of earbuds even though I don't need them.
And so in the link that they sent me, they said, click through and you get 35% off. I'm like, cool. So I click through the link and it takes me to a picture of what I think are the earbuds that they're selling, and it says 20% off, with a certain promo code.
And I'm like, okay, well I'm looking for the 35% off, but there was a different promo code in the text, so I'm like, okay, I'll just plug the correct promo code and it'll work. Right?
So finally figured out how to do that. No, it said this is not applicable to this particular product. So I'm like, okay. But they had some sort of chat person or chat being or chat AI, I don't know what it was.
Kevin: Chat AI agent. Yeah.
David: Yeah. Something not quite what I thought it might be, but. I thought, okay, well I'll ask the question. And none of the answers that I got were relevant to what I was asking. And I was like, I'm here. I've got my wallet open.
Kevin: I'm ready to buy!
David: I want to buy exactly the thing that you sent me a text to, and you're making it hard. Why are you making it so hard?
Kevin: Yeah.
David: And it replied quickly to a lot of questions and then, it was just like ghosting. It's like, okay, I didn't hear anything back. So I'm like, I'm like, are you AI? And I didn't get an answer. I thought if it was AI, it would at least tell me it was AI.
So, I didn't get to order that day. The next day I tried again. I actually reached out to their customer support, had another non-experience there. But eventually I was able to figure out that apparently there were two sets of this earbud in a similar color, and the link took you to the wrong one and applied the wrong link. And so that's why it was saying it was wrong.
And I didn't care about the color. I was like, I wouldn't have normally bought this color, but it was 35% off, so I was like...
Kevin: Yeah, yeah, whatever.
David: Right.
Kevin: Earbuds.
David: Anyway, long story short is what should have taken three to five minutes and been an exceptional experience took a whole lot longer and diminished my passion for this particular product.
So I thought, you know, there are a lot of businesses that do this sort of thing, and the words that leap to my mind is that they're sabotaging their own sales, which is kind of the purpose of this conversation.
Not for me to vent, but for us to talk about what businesses can do about it.
Kevin: Well, I'm glad you got that off your chest, David.
David: Thanks.
Kevin: It's probably something you needed to do.
David: I feel a lot better.
Kevin: Good, good, good. Well, so like in more of a general sense, what are some of the most common ways you see businesses do that? Sabotage their own sales efforts.
David: As I was thinking about it, I thought, well, first off is the process, right? In this particular experience, it's the process. The process is I send you a link to a specific place that could and should apply exactly that product at exactly that discount so that I could just check out and buy it.
If they had done just that, I would've had no problems and I would've said, "wow, that was great. Let's do this again soon."
Kevin: Mm-hmm.
David: So the first thing was the process. The second thing was kind of process related, but it involved potential people, which was the chat experience, which I'm still not sure if that was part of the process or if that was a person thing.
I'm not sure who blew it in that situation, but I thought, okay, you got your process and you got your people, and so generally it's going to be one of those two things.
Is it your process that's messing things up or is it the people who are implementing the process that are messing things up?
It's hard to know sometimes.
Kevin: Right.
David: But in most businesses, if you've got solid processes in place, then most of your people will be able to do their job well. And when they're not doing their job well, you can look at is the problem with the process or is the problem with the person?
Because if everybody's implementing the same processes and they're good processes, then everything should go well.
If things are going wrong, those are the two primary things you have to look at.
Kevin: Do you think business owners recognize that they're doing this and just are like, eh, whatever, or do you think they're just kind of clueless?
David: I think they're not doing it on purpose, and I hesitate to call them clueless, but I think that they are not really planning on doing this.
Kevin: Yeah.
David: Now, with a company like this, that is, I would say primarily an online entity, they should really have this stuff dialed in and nailed down.
A lot of the small businesses that we work with, they are doing their day-to-day thing. They're building processes as they can. They're essentially trying to put things in place based on what works well in their business.
In a lot of cases, small to medium sized businesses are not as focused on building processes so that they don't have to think about every single thing they do.
So to some extent, in the types of businesses that we work with, I think that's the thing that slows them down. That's not really their focus.
If they're doing things well, then they're doing things well. And if somebody's blowing something, somebody's blowing something. But without those processes, you don't get that consistency, which can also sabotage your sales.
Kevin: Yeah, and it's something that like, my friends know that I complain about the user experience on a lot of apps and websites and things like that all the time.
And the word that always people use is friction. And if you create too much friction, there's just so many options now. There's a lot of people who make earbuds. So like, you stuck it out for maybe longer than the average person, because you already liked the brand.
But if someone's more new to it, they're gone.
David: That's exactly right. And I think for the types of businesses that we interact with, a lot of the thinking process that needs to go into it is, what is the experience that my people are having? What happens if somebody calls my businesses?
Do they go to voicemail? Do they get an auto attendant? Does somebody answer the phone? What happens? What's the follow up process? How quickly are they likely to get a return call or whatever the experience is there.
When they're emailing, what happens? When they're texting, what happens? And just by looking at the primary points of contact, you can come up with a lot of ideas that will very likely make your business perform better.
Kevin: Mm-hmm. Are there other ways people, you know, businesses can sabotage their sales? Less software processes, but more like internal processes, like sporadic outreach, inconsistency, things like not being present.
Can you talk about some other ways businesses self-sabotage?
David: Yeah. All of the above. Everything you just said. And they all do fall under the headings of either process slash systems or people, right?
Kevin: Mm-hmm.
David: So all the different things that you mentioned, they certainly sabotage businesses if you're not conscious of each of those things.
Kevin: You mentioned before you don't think they're doing it on purpose, but how can a functioning business have such poor sales approach or efforts or I don't know, it seems like that should be more dialed in.
David: Yeah. And I think a lot of it has to do with the focus, particularly in small and medium sized businesses. They're not thinking that way. It's like every day there's something going on in the business that I have to address. And when you're busy putting out fires, it's hard to build infrastructure.
Kevin: So then, does it come down to the people you bring on?
David: Everything ultimately boils down to the people you bring on. But it also boils down to how are these people being trained? Am I showing them the right things to do? Are the processes that I'm giving them, do they make sense? Do they allow that person to create the experience that I'm looking to create?
A lot of times in business when you're looking to grow things, one of the things you have to ask yourself is not just how do I want to do things, but how do I want things done in this particular business?
So when we're working with clients, a lot of times there's a business owner who's really good at doing things and they have trouble getting the people in the organizations to be able to do them as well.