In this day of data deluge and information overload, it is not surprising that salespeople are finding it increasingly difficult to break through customers’ barriers and convince consumers of their product or service’s unique value. According to Richardson’s 2016 Selling Challenges study, there are three primary obstacles which inhibit prospecting today:
- Identifying triggers/sales signals that indicate issues you can resolve
- Identifying target accounts
- Qualifying prospects
These problems are linked together in the common factor of miscommunication: consumers are decreasingly in tune with mass media communications and increasingly reliant on the word of trusted relational networks. Sellers need to break through these barriers by establishing methods of communicating value to the customer through customer-preferred informational networks.
Ref: http://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-prospecting-challenges-2016
BoweryJE22
I could see how all three of these factors could be obstacles in prospecting today especially qualifying prospects. Discovering if a prospect is right or not appears to be quite difficult especially early in the sales cycle with little information to go off of.