Don’t Sabotage Your Sales Success

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?

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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.

And so one of the things that we work on is helping them to identify the specific things they do that are better and different, not just in terms of inside their business, but also in terms of industry standards.

What are the things they do better and differently than their competitors? And then how do you build those things into systems that will allow your other people to do them?

Kevin: No one wants to think, oh, my process stinks, or I don’t have a good system in place. How do you have those conversations with business owners about how to like, change processes that might be either outdated or inefficient.

David: For a lot of them, it’s not even a matter of changing a process, it’s a matter of establishing one.

Chet Holmes used to refer to it as the tribal method of training, where somebody does something and then they tell that person what they did, and then that person trains somebody else and tells that person what they did, and it’s like whisper down the lane. It just gets more and more diluted and messed up the more it goes.

So as you proceed down that path, it doesn’t get better.

When you’re able to document those things have them written down so that you can actually show it to someone, you can watch them follow the procedure and see, did that work? Did it actually get them the result they’re looking for?

When you’re able to do that, then you’ve got something that you can replicate.

Kevin: If someone might be listening to this going, am I self sabotaging? What are some easy signs? What are some easy things that you feel people can look at within their business processes and go, yeah, this is bad. We need to fix this.

David: Well, a lot of times your sales will tell you that, right?

Kevin: Yeah, true.

David: If your sales aren’t where they need to be, something is probably going wrong somewhere. If your sales are really good, if people love your business, if you’re getting a lot of great feedback, then you’re probably not doing that.

But you can probably figure that anytime there’s an issue… If a customer’s having an issue, you want to look at it and say, was this a process problem or was it a person problem?

If your customers continue to have problems with the same person in your organization again and again and again, that might be an indication that it’s a person problem. But that’s what you want to look at.

Anytime there is any sort of issue in your business that’s not quite going the way it should, you want to 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?

In your earbud example, someone should be going through that process to test it, right? To make sure that it works?

Does that start at the top? Who’s ultimately responsible to make sure these things go smoothly and properly?

Ultimately, it’s whoever owns the business is going to be responsible for it. But if they’re delegating it to people who aren’t paying attention to those sort of things, they’re really shooting themselves in the foot.

Kevin: Mm-hmm.

David: I mean, just that simple thing with the text. If you’re sending out a text to potentially thousands of people, link to the right thing!

Kevin: Yeah.

David: Link to the right discount code, link to the right product. Because that one thing alone would’ve completely avoided the necessity of interacting with their customer service department, which had all its own issues and their bot, which had all its own issues.

I mean, if I were involved with that business, I would start at the top exactly like what you just said. I start at the top and I say, okay, who sent the text? Right? And why wasn’t it linked to the right thing?

And then this bot thing or this chat thing? Is this a person? A bot? Some combination? ’cause it ain’t working! Right? Let’s figure out what’s going on with that.

And then their actual customer service who emailed me four days later to see if he could make sure that I got what I wanted to order. He didn’t even know that I had ordered it at that point. It was just all these errors and I thought there’s very little in this business that they seem to be doing right at the moment, which is unfortunate.

Kevin: Mm-hmm. Yeah. I think people are patient when it comes to AI chatbots these days, but if you can’t tell and you can’t get to a human, then that’s a problem.

David: Yeah, exactly. And when it starts to ghost you, or when the person started to ghost me, that’s like, is the AI ghosting me now?

Kevin: Yeah. I don’t think they, I don’t think I’d….

David: Yeah, you don’t want AI that’s going to be ghosting people. But for every business, if you’re looking at the things you can improve in your business, look to those two things. What are the systems or processes that I have in place, particularly anything that is customer facing, right?

I want to make sure that all of those things are nailed down to the best of my ability. And then just look at the people who are implementing it, and try to find those who seem to have issues on an ongoing basis and make sure that they are really checked out on the processes.

And if they are checked out on the processes and they continue to do things wrong, then you may need to look at a replacement.

Kevin: These are great tips. How can people get more information?

David: You can go to TopSecrets.com/call, schedule a call with myself or my team. If you feel like there are parts of your business that aren’t working quite right, if you feel like there are things that are potentially being sabotaged, not intentionally, but just by the fact that they’re not coming across the way they need to, things aren’t being done the way they need to be done, give us a call.

We’d love to have the conversation with you and show you how you can really stop your internal processes and your internal people from sabotaging your business.

Kevin: Awesome stuff. All right, well David, great to see you. Thanks so much for the conversation. Really appreciate it.

David: Thank you, Kevin.