> It isn't worth the time of the salespeople to entertain them, understand their usage, and give a quote if the customer already knows they want to use a competitor's product.
This quote reminds me of an eye-opening speech I attended way back about the things you learn about when you run a business.
One of the lessons was that hiring the wrong salesperson can put you out of business. When you're hiring the first time, you think they're going to maximize their commissions. In reality, a lot of people are satisfied getting half the income they could by only taking the easy money. They might have to work five or ten times as hard to make the second half of sales, so they let those customers know they're disinterested and they go elsewhere.
The tougher half of sales are maybe 90% of the potential customers, or maybe more than that. You lose 90% of your customer base initially, then people talk to others about their experience, you've lost half of the rest, and suddenly you're no longer a viable business.
The tougher half of sales. In other words, 90% of your potential customers are concentrated amongst the half of leads that are difficult to close.
I don't know if that specific ratio is true, but it feels right. The OP's scenario is vivid to me. So many salespeople just want the fish to jump in the boat...
Feels right to me. Getting my enterprise to spend money on anything they didn’t before is a multi month affair costing tens of thousands of dollars in wasted salary and nearly 6 months to make a purchase with a yearly price lower than my monthly salary…
This quote reminds me of an eye-opening speech I attended way back about the things you learn about when you run a business.
One of the lessons was that hiring the wrong salesperson can put you out of business. When you're hiring the first time, you think they're going to maximize their commissions. In reality, a lot of people are satisfied getting half the income they could by only taking the easy money. They might have to work five or ten times as hard to make the second half of sales, so they let those customers know they're disinterested and they go elsewhere.
The tougher half of sales are maybe 90% of the potential customers, or maybe more than that. You lose 90% of your customer base initially, then people talk to others about their experience, you've lost half of the rest, and suddenly you're no longer a viable business.