Why do apparently promising sales opportunities go wrong so often? Why do close dates speed past, get reset and then repeat the cycle? Why do so many sales forecasts bear so little relationship to reality?
Rick Page, founder of The Complex Sale offered sound advice in the title of his deservedly best-selling book: “hope is not a strategy”.
To which I’m inclined to add “and ignorance is no excuse”.
Page was right. Hope is not, and can never be, an effective strategy. The word should have no place in our sales vocabulary. But I’ll wager that the H-word is still being used every day in countless conversations between sales people and their managers.
Hope is worse than worthless. It encourages sales people to relax in the comfort of untested assumptions. It prevents sales people from recognising that they know less than they ought to about the reality of their customer’s situation.