Do equipment sales team behaviors and the definition of insanity share the same neighborhood?

The colloquial definition of insanity:

Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Yeah, but what do they know about commercial equipment sales? Well, nothing. But considering the author of the quote was Albert Einstein and he basically was the smartest dude ever—I wouldn’t count him out when applying this to the behavior of commercial equipment sales teams. Here’s what we mean:

• Only 9% of commercial equipment sales teams lead with a payment despite the fact that customers are 48% more likely to choose a less preferred brand if a payment is offered up front.
• 76% of sales people said they feel “pushy” when talking about a payment despite the fact that salespeople that offer payments up front are 600% more likely to hit their annual quota.
• 82% of sales people will only bring up payment if the customer does, despite 73% of commercial equipment customers saying they are more likely to keep shopping until someone brings it up to them.

This data comes from annual research on the buying and selling behaviors with commercial equipment and guess what, the gap is WIDENING. That means the disconnect between what sales teams do and what customers want is increasing for the 3^rd straight year. But beyond the stats, our favorite part of the research is the most common explanation that was given for the gap by commercial equipment sales teams:

“It’s just what we have always done”

How dumb does ‘ole Albert look now? Most commercial equipment sales teams are afraid of leading with a payment. The data shows that it drives more sales conversations that any other activity, their customers clearly want it and it would be a big differentiator among the competition—but—they are doing what they have always done. And hey, that’s comfortable. But who has ever done anything truly great by doing only what was comfortable? Was your first big job comfortable? The first date, wedding, child, big sale (maybe that was the first date)…were any of those things in the category of “what you have always done”? Of course not.

To grow our businesses we have to try new things. Even fail. Absolutely fail. But not trying new things or attempting to look at matters in a new light will have sun revolving around the earth again. And maybe’s that’s the biggest failure of all. At SLS, we can help you overcome the fear and close the gap between what you have done and what you need to be doing while giving you the confidence of delivering a better solution along the way. Let’s talk.