Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

It’s Only Common Sense: Salespeople Need to Sell

Salespeople need to sell. Wow! What a brilliant idea. Of course, salespeople need to sell. What else would they be doing if not selling? They are salespeople, right?

Sure, they are, but some of them have also been known to do anything except be in front of customers, selling. In my many (too many, some might say) years of sales management and consulting, I have seen and heard every reason under the sun why a salesperson cannot sell; some of these reasons were the most creative inventions that I have ever heard.

Here are 25 reasons your salespeople may have for not getting in front of customers:

1. The customers don’t want to see anyone on Monday because they are just getting settled in for the week.
2. The customers don’t want to see anyone on Friday because they are wrapping up for the week.
3. I can’t go see customers on Friday because that’s when I do my paperwork.
4. I can’t see anyone on Monday because that’s when I write my report for the week.
5. Most of my customers have a status meeting on Wednesday, so I can’t see them on Wednesdays.
6. If I make sales calls, my boards don’t move, so I have to stay here and make sure that they are moving all the time or they’ll be late.
7.  I have to get ready for the trade show next week, so I’m buried with that and can’t go out this week.
8. I had to go to the trade show last week, and even though it was only one day, it was one day to fly there and one day to get back.
9. I’m so busy solving quality, engineering, and manufacturing problems that I can’t go on the road.
10. I’m so bogged down with this forecasting that I can’t sell.
11. I have to stay here because I am expecting a conference call in five hours.
12. I don’t like to see anyone during the summer months, so I stay away for three months and go back in the fall. (Yes, someone actually told me this once in New England; he was a rep, and I canceled his contract the next day.)
13. It’s so close to Labor Day that all the buyers are out for one last week of vacation with their kids before school starts up again.
14. I can’t visit customers in July because companies are taking the entire month off for summer break.
15. I can’t visit customers from mid-December to mid-January because of the holidays.
16. I can’t get appointments because millennials won’t answer their phones.
17. No one wants to see me anymore because they are all too busy.
18. Everybody is buying online, and they would rather do it that way.
19. Everybody is going to China, Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, and they don’t want to see anyone selling domestic sources.
20. They only buy from domestic sources, so they don’t want to see anyone representing Asian shops.
21. If we don’t have ITAR, NADCAP, AS9100, MIL-P-31032, or whatever it is that we don’t have, there is no reason for me to call on them.
22. Nobody wants to see me because we don’t have a laser drill, direct imaging, blind and buried vias, filled vias, or whatever else we don’t have.
23. I was there twice last year. I don’t want to makes a pest of myself by badgering them every six months. (Someone told me this once too!)
24. They don’t have a receptionist, so I don’t know how to reach anybody.
25. I’m too busy getting ready for the sales meeting next week to get in front of customers this week.

And finally, in the spirit of under-promising and over-delivering, here’s one more, which is my personal favorite—not to mention this year’s most popular reason why salespeople couldn’t visit customers.

26. People don’t answer phone calls anymore, so I can’t make appointments to see anyone.

And on and on it goes. I suspect that it has always been this way with salespeople; the good ones—like Ross Perot, who broke his annual yearly quota at IBM by the second week of January—always find a way. That’s a story I love to tell salespeople when they whine about all of the reasons they can’t make sales calls. I’m often tempted to hand out custom-ordered plastic bracelets that read “WWRD?” meaning “What Would Ross Do?” to remind them that a great salesperson will always find a way, no matter the odds.

I bet a great salesperson can make hay in this new environment while everyone else is singing the same “Why I can’t call on customers” song. Think about all the time the customers have on their hands, now that most salespeople are too busy to visit customers. When everyone says that something can’t be done, there is always an ignorant fool who will find a way to do it.

It’s only common sense.

Dan Beaulieu is president of D.B. Management Group.