While we see notable companies succeeding in their online promotion, majority still relies on the convincing powers of real-life sales personnel. Professionals who work on field use tools such as the Vender app to help them manage their time well and make sure that they get to coordinate with the prospect clients on their list.

Despite the advancements in lead tracking, however, it didn’t stop some of the major challenges that continually make the job difficult. Below is a short list of the most common ones.

Setting appointments

The very first challenge that salespeople will encounter this year (even on the previous years) is getting someone to agree on an appointment. One cannot fully encourage a prospect client to invest or buy something without letting the latter understand the thing that he is paying.

Having in appointment seeks to help these clients understand. Unfortunately, even this becomes difficult considering the level of distrust a lot of people have towards those agents who sell them something. With more companies now letting individual agents do the job for them, it becomes even more challenging to make oneself different and encourage a person to listen to what you have to say.

Networking

Building a solid professional network is necessary in the job of any sales person. It’s his primary source of information and contacts to individuals who might want to invest on the business or product he is promoting. In this social media age, this should come easy and hassle-free, but reality says otherwise. Despite the ease in sending out information online, it didn’t make the entire networking process easy.

If any, it only opened the field to more competitors who may or may not have better pitch than most of the average sales people do. Those who fail to build their network over time risk lagging behind the competition and eventually miss the chance to widen their connection even more and attract client attention.

The ‘difference’ factor

How different are you from the rest? What makes you a better choice than the rest of the offers?

These questions are only a few of the most crucial ones that a lot of salespeople still struggle to answer. With the tremendous flood of competition in the market, it has become more difficult to promote something that would resonate towards the market and would clearly set a higher standard compared to the rest of the competition.

Handling commitments

In the event when a sales personnel successfully convinces a prospect to meet, the next challenge would be to encourage the said person to commit. Commitment is hard because it requires consistency. On the part of the salespeople, this means consistently in giving out quality updates to clients who initially said yes to the offer.

It’s vital to keep their interest level up to make sure that they don’t find any reason to move away and look from somewhere else. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts by some, this remains a big challenge considering the vast competent offers available for the public. Still, the most successful salespeople stay committed. There is no easy way out.

Dealing with various personalities

Lastly, there is the issue of dealing with different personalities. As a sales personnel, one must be flexible when it comes to handling people of different attitude. There are those whom you can easily talk to while others tend to be overly skeptical of just about anything you tell them. The most effective sales people are those who can do well in keeping good business relationship with various personalities without getting overwhelmed.

The success of any business venture is reflected to how well they grab the attention of a market and encourage them to stay. The process never gets easy, but having a firm grasp on the most crucial challenges is the first step to overcoming them.

The post Key Challenges Faced by Salespeople this 2017 appeared first on Internet Marketing Reach.

At this age of digitization, we proved to the world how resourceful and resilient we are from texting to Friendster and now to Facebook and other social media. The world gave us the title ‘The Social Networking Capital.’ Let’s trace the proofs for being so.

How social are we

According to the Social, Digital & Mobile in APAC in 2014 report, the Philippines is one of the most social nations in the Asia Pacific region. Here are the figures as of January 2014:

• 105,720,644 total population, 49% of which are urban dwellers
• 37,602,976 Internet users (36% Internet penetration)
• 34,000,000 active Facebook users (32% Facebook penetration)
• 106,987,098 active mobile subscriptions (101% mobile subscription penetration)

This is definitely higher than that of other Southeast Asian nations like Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia and Vietnam. One of the reasons for the high Internet penetration is the availability of pre-paid and postpaid services as well as free data (for browsing and surfing) on specific services.

Our Internet usage indicators

Aside from being active Internet users, we are also fond of accessing the Internet through our mobile phones. Did you know that smartphone sales here in the Philippines reached 326% in 2012? Not only that, we prefer Samsung than Apple.

• 6 hours and 12 minutes – the average time that an Internet user spends using such daily through a laptop or desktop
• 2 hours and 48 minutes – the average time that a mobile Internet user spends using such daily
• 31% mobile Internet penetration

We can’t get enough of social networking sites. We are not using these sites for personal reasons. Actually, the social media has been instrumental in our collective efforts to battle the aftermath of natural disasters including Ondoy, Habagat, and Yolanda.

Our social media usage stats

Facebook is an all-time favorite, followed by Twitter. The social media penetration in the Philippines is 35% which means that 1 in every 10 Filipinos is using a social networking site. In particular, the majority of the Filipinos have a Facebook account although not all these accounts are active.

• LinkedIn – 39%
• Instagram – 42%
• Google+ – 69%
• Twitter – 81%
• Facebook – 97%
• Others – 98%

Further, the percentages of mobile users who use social media apps on their devices and who use location-based services are 62% and 29%, respectively. We spend an average of four hours and one minute on social media every day.

Evidently, social penetration is remarkably high, reaching 97%. The popularity of sharing photos through Facebook and Twitter, among other social sites, increased exponentially at around 55%. Did you know that the selfiest cities are Makati, Mandaluyong and Cebu, according to TIME magazine?

Our mobile usage stat

It was also forecasted that the Philippines will be a mobile-first country by fourth quarter of 2014. The Filipinos will use their mobile devices in accessing the Internet than a laptop or desktop. The Filipinos thereby are very active mobile users.

• 4 million total number of active mobile broadband subscribers
• 3.8% mobile broadband subscriptions
• 24 million active social media users who success social media through their mobile devices
• 23% mobile social penetration
• 1 in every 10 Filipinos is a mobile phone owner
• 93% of the smartphone users search for information through their phone
• 88% of the users research products through their phones
• 32% of the users made a purchase through their phones
• 39% smartphone penetration

These figures aren’t so surprising at all. Filipinos inherently adapt anything digital. In fact, the country is celebrating its 20^th anniversary since it first witnessed the use of Internet connection. That’s how social we are, transcending beyond borders and into becoming boundary-less.

Source:

http://wearesocial.net/blog/2014/01/social-digital-mobile-apac-2014/

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