How to Troubleshoot When Your Sales Are Down

Before you jump to conclusions, do a little research.

• Ask your team how the personalize their pitches to each prospect. Unless they’re well-versed in what their prospect does and what they care about, they’re missing an opportunity to delight them.
• Check if market conditions that are influencing your business.
• Check whether team members struggle to close their won opportunities. It might be a good time to update your training and materials.
• Make sure that your sales process is solid. Your team can have trouble keeping up with the steps to get their deals to the finish line.

For a small dip (under 5% for the month), make minor adjustments.

• See if sales decreased across the team or for individuals. A top performer may be burned out or having a hard time.
• Look for external factors such as a product issue, service issue, or change in your competitors.
• Improve your team training and provide more management reviews to provide continuous feedback and help the team maximize sales.

A larger drop in performance (somewhere between 5-10% for the month), indicates that it’s a good time to bolster your sales team.

• Is your team in a rut? Help them find ways to freshen up or innovate their sales techniques.
• Prepare your team to give dynamic presentations and pitch to prospects anytime, anywhere so they don’t miss opportunities. Save presentation slides, fact sheets, and other materials in a public folder and block off time for your team to practice their pitch.
• Do you have enough headcount? If your small team is overworked or your teammates are playing too many roles, their sales can suffer.

If the drop in performance could be related to high staff turnover, focus on building loyalty and retention.

• Try improving your new-hire training and implementing team feedback. New-hire training can be the positive first impression that builds loyalty and excitement in your growing team.
• Keep employees happy with programs like in-office perks, performance-based bonuses, and other incentives.
• Conduct an anonymous survey, lead a listening tour, or hire outside help to figure out why people leave.

When you notice a dip in your team’s average sale size, you can make a few adjustments.

• Optimize your average price or SKU to give your customers more value.
• Revise your average list price or discounts.
• Coordinate sales efforts across your entire team to increase deal sizes.

If your average sale size is down significantly, focus on ways to increase sales size.

• Can your team clearly articulate the value your company brings when qualifying customers? Help them achieve this to make your customers more receptive to your message and to reduce price pushback.
• Consider bundling products.
• Focus your team’s efforts on target opportunities that they can win.

If you’re losing opportunities, take a look at your sales process.

• Track which competitors are winning your prospective customers. Bonus points if you can also capture why.
• Make sure that your process includes dropping weak opportunities quickly so your team can focus on promising deals.

When your win rate needs a bigger boost, it’s time to listen to your customers.

• Consider appointing a customer advisory board to help you understand and respond to what creates value for your customers.
• Implement a referral program for your existing customers to help you connect with the right decision-makers at new companies.

With a small decrease in opportunity volume, figure out why and nip it in the bud.

• Look for any external factors that caused your team to focus on fewer opportunities.
• Make sure that your team employs the right narrative and provides valuable insights on their first contact with prospects. If they don’t spend enough time on the phone, they might not be making a strong impact with leads and prospects.

For a significant decrease in opportunity volume, keep digging.

• Check if your sales are dropping. Fewer opportunities in the mix could be the culprit.
• Help your team employ a variety of methods to break through to prospects, and equip them with your own data to leverage as they acquire new customers.

If your team takes a little longer than usual to close their open deals, figure out why.

• Check for issues with your sales stages. If your stages don’t accurately reflect your team’s workflow, your teammates could be struggling to track their efforts.
• Make sure that your team might is closing their deals in Salesforce as soon as the details are hammered out.
• Implement consistent reviews of your sales pipeline and momentum. Help them to review and improve their processes.

A big increase in days to close can mean that your longer sales period contributes to a decline in closed won opportunities and total sales.

• Avoid complicating your sales process and look for ways to decrease the number of stages or the number of days per stage.
• Schedule regular reviews of stalled opportunities and support your team as they resolve their challenges.