Show notes
There's always going to be a bottleneck in sales. There's always going to be something that is not working as smoothly or as ideally as it could or should. And our job is to constantly identify, what is it now? What is it today? Now that I got this other thing fixed, what's the new thing that's slowing us down?
David: Hi, and welcome back. In today's episode, co-host Kevin Rosenquist and I discuss your biggest bottleneck to sales. Welcome back Kevin.
Kevin: Great to see you, David. And this is definitely one that I think anybody can relate to no matter what business you're in, but you're talking about your biggest bottleneck to sales.
Let's not bury the lead. What is it?
David: In every business there is generally, more than one bottleneck, but there's one big one that is going to keep you from hitting the next bottleneck, or the one after that, or the one after that.
And if you don't tackle that first one correctly and get rid of it, then you never get to down the line.
It's like an assembly line. If you think about a factory that's manufacturing something and there's an assembly line, if there's a problem at the first station in the assembly line, everything stops, right?
Because you can't move to step two until you've done step one. And so for most of us, when it comes to sales, there is a bottleneck.
And it might not be at the very beginning. It might be towards the middle, or it might even be near the end.
But until you identify what your biggest bottleneck is, you cannot apply the appropriate resources necessary --the time, the energy, and the focus --to blast that thing out of there, so that you can then move forward with everything you need to do.
Kevin: All right, so you couldn't just give me the one thing. That's fine. Can you give me some of the more common bottlenecks that you see when it comes to sales?
David: Well, sure. When you're in a selling situation, what are the biggest bottlenecks you run into? Well, I'm having trouble reaching the person that I need to reach, right?
They're not responding to me. Or some people, toward the end of the sales process, they get right up until the point of closing and then they choke.
So that's an example of a bottleneck where if you don't get that one nailed, you can go all the way through a sales process, then get to that point and then not be able to close the sale and everything is kind of wasted.
So looking at the steps along the way, what are you going to look at?
You're going to look at the people that you're interacting with, the conversations that you're having with them, the timeframe that it takes you to get them from point to point. Because for a lot of people, that is a big one.
Not being able to set a pace, set a tempo that allows you to be able to get to that sale sooner rather than later, that could be a big bottleneck for people.
A lot of times we have an idea of how we would like the sales process to go. But if the client has a different idea, we're going to have to follow what they're going to be willing to go along with.
So in those situations, if we say, alright, I'm going to try to do everything I can here to advance the process to get them to the next step.
Maybe it's just a matter of, in the promotional products industry, will they send me the art?
They may have agreed to the sale, they may have agreed to the quantities, they may have agreed to the colors and the Pantone color matches and the tight registration.
They've agreed to all that. And you can't get them to send the art. That's really frustrating. And it can be a bottleneck that holds up everything.
And these bottlenecks that I'm referring to are the things that hold up everything that comes past it.
So by simply taking some time to identify what are the biggest bottlenecks, because if you find in your business that it's, "I can't seem to get art from the client," then you need to make sure you put a process in place that is designed to handle that.
Ideally, it's something that you're going to be able to delegate to an administrative assistant, or perhaps delegate to technology to some extent, where it sends them reminder messages that they need this or that your administrative assistant can follow up and make the phone call, whatever it takes.
Putting those procedures in place is the only thing that's going to blow out those bottlenecks.
And for most of us, there's something that's driving us crazy. There's one thing that is frustrating us. For some it might be, okay, I'm having a problem getting my orders delivered. You may have a problem with the suppliers you're dealing with.
If that's your biggest bottleneck, you got to fix that one, because each of these is a business killer.
Kevin: So do you think of your sales process from start through to the delivered product, if you will, till the end in that entire cycle you really have to kind of analyze how that is going?
Is there a strategy that will help them identify those bottlenecks?
David: Yeah, and you have to start way before the order gets placed. You have to start very early in the process, even in terms of when you're thinking about who you're going to be talking to. If you decide that you're going to be going to a networking function or something like that, you want to try to get leads from that.
You examine that part of the process. How did that go? When I went there, were there people who were interested in what I had to offer, or was everyone there trying to sell instead of trying to buy, right?
So you can look at those kind of things. What's the quality and the caliber of the prospects that I'm meeting at this particular event, or with this particular approach?
If I'm taking out an ad and an industry publication to try to get people to express interest in what I have to offer, what's the result I get? What's the response that I got?
Every time we do anything to bring a new customer through the door, we're putting out energy, we're putting out effort, we're doing something to make that happen. Whether it's a social media post, whether it's a direct mailing, whether it's an ad, whatever it is, we're doing something. And that something needs to create a result.
Sometimes the result that it creates is nothing. And so what you need to do then is to say, okay, was it just a one time thing? Or if I test it again, is it still producing nothing?
Can I change it? Can I tweak it so that I can blow this bottleneck out? Because whatever it is, whatever the issue is, whatever the thing is that's slowing you down, you have to first identify it and then you have to systematically blow it out.
Kevin: Mm-hmm. How do these things form, you know, like I, I know every situation's different, but does it come down to complacency? Is it not looking at numbers, analytics? What do you find that is the biggest reason why these bottlenecks happen?
David: Well, it could be that, but I would say nine times out of ten it's just life.
It's interacting with other people who don't always do exactly what you want them to do when you ask them to do it, right? So that is likely to be a thing.
But bottlenecks happen in every business, in every industry. I mean, when I gave the example of an assembly line, that's a very obvious one.
And most of us, in business and in sales, we don't think in those terms because we generally don't operate in those terms.
We're not putting hubcaps on a car when it's ready to roll off the line. We're not thinking in terms of all the other steps that had to happen along the way. And as salespeople, we are very often involved in all of those steps, in each of those steps.
And if we've never taken the time to learn the best way to attach the windshield and attach the windshield wipers and whatever it's I'm doing to build a car. I've never built a car, but whatever those things are, if I haven't taken the time to do those things right, then it's going to slow down my process, it's going to mess things up, and it's going to become a bottleneck.
So when it comes to sails, it's the same kind of thing. There are very specific things that need to happen in terms of the people we're interacting with and how we're communicating with those people, and the frequency with which we're doing that, and the efficiency with which we're doing that so that we're not wasting time, their time as well as ours.
I mean, I think that's an important aspect of this, is none of us like wasting our own time, but wow, you start wasting a prospect's time or a client's time, they are not going to sit still for that.
Kevin: As far as removing that bottleneck, as far as blowing it out, clearing it out, what is the best way to do that? Because there might not always be an easy answer, right?
David: Exactly. Yeah. Well, once you've identified it, that's a big step. Sure. because a lot of times we don't even see it. We're just so busy doing all the things that we need to do on a day-to-day basis that we're not even paying attention to all the minutia of the things that we're doing along the way.
So once you've identified it, that is a big, important part of the process. Then it's really just a matter of looking at what is happening in there? And is that happening consistently? Am I doing that the same way with each person that I interact with?
And if I'm doing it the same way with each person that I interact with and I'm getting not so good results, that means I need to change that process.
If I'm doing it the same way and I'm getting results that are all over the place, then I have to look at, all right, well, what kind of people am I bringing into this process? Because if it works for some and it doesn't work for others, I know my process is the same. I know that what I'm communicating is the same. Is it then related to the people or is it related to the way that I'm saying it?