In-Sights: Fixing The Sales Fragmentation Problem: How To Align Your Sales Strategy
- Tyson Group
- 12 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Sales teams today face a common challenge—fragmentation. With multiple tools, strategies, and messaging inconsistencies, sales efforts often become disjointed, leading to missed opportunities and lower close rates. In this short insights episode of Against the Sales Odds, Lance Tyson breaks down the root causes of sales fragmentation and shares practical ways to align your sales process for better efficiency and results. Tune in for a quick but powerful lesson on bringing cohesion back to your sales strategy!
Lance is the bestselling author of Selling Is An Away Game and The Human Sales Factor. You can purchase these books at Tyson Group.
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In-Sights: Fixing The Sales Fragmentation Problem: How To Align Your Sales Strategy
Understanding Sales Fragmentation
There's a concept going on in sales, and it's across the board. It's called fragmentation. See if this happens to you at all. Do you have prospects that you've talked to on the phone, you've either met formally, like on a Teams call or Zoom call, you've gotten texts from, voicemails from, and maybe some emails, and there's a fragmented communication going on that you have at least in three different ways communicated with them? Who has that going on? That's fragmentation. It's hard for salespeople because you're communicating across a bunch of different platforms.
I have one of my salespeople instructors who does nothing but send me text messages with voice notes. She's smart. They disappear. When you send a voice note on an iPhone, it disappears. You've got to actively save them. I'm then looking for the text, thinking, “She texted me?” Have you ever gotten a text but it's a voicemail that somebody's left that has text to? You're dealing with this fragmentation. The hard thing for all of you is, “How do I take what's happening to me and get good at it?”
Fragmentation and sales fragmentation. The only way we know that we can help you is because the fragmented communication makes your sales processes longer. Go back to what Naomi said in the beginning when a following-up is taking longer. The hard thing about sales for all of you is you've got to glue all the conversations together. That's not only good organizational skills and good time management, but you have to start picking out when you're going to have the right conversation.
For instance, you want to be talking to somebody when you resolve an objection. You don't want to be doing it over text or email. Your best odds are to talk to somebody through it. You are hired for your verbal articulation skills. I could hire first-year nursing students to send stuff out to people. Write this down. Sending ain't selling.
I'm not going to argue with the fact that you've probably sent a lot of things out and sold a lot of things. I'm saying it's not your best odds. Especially going back to what Adam said, we got this higher price stuff. You're not going to win it. You're not going to win some of that stuff by sending out locations and benefits. You're going to have to talk people through it. He even said it. He goes, “This is different.” He flat-out said it. It's not impossible I didn't read that from him. I've met Adam before. It's pretty reasonable to say he is going to figure it out, and all of you are.
If we go to a casino, what are our best odds at betting? You don't want to play slots. Slots aren't your best odds to win. That's why there are four times as many slot machines as there are anything else, because the odds are not in your favor as a player. It's not poker or blackjack. They're a little bit better than slots. It comes out to craps. Your best odds are games like craps, games that seem difficult.
How To Solve Sales Fragmentation
You want to have some different parts of the sales process. You want to set yourself up. When I get all this fragmented communication, what's going to put my best odds? I need to talk to somebody about this. I need to go through this with you. I need to show you what the product is. That's where this has to go. Does everybody at least see fragmentation in your world a little bit? Let's start talking about some solutions to all these things we put out.
Your brutal truths, we commented on that. We talked about buying and warning signals. We talked about fair and not equal. We talked about the sales landscape that maybe some of us sell with our own profile being prevalent. Sometimes, that works, and sometimes, it doesn't. You go back to what Marcus said, “I got to create some momentum here,” whether it's artificial momentum. We're talking about a very fragmented world we live in.
Back in the day when Richard started selling, he talked to somebody and had 1 or 2 conversations in front of him that were not as fragmented. It’s the same with Baker and the same with me. We had a contained prospect at some level. You guys are in a brave new world. You're dealing with all kinds of communication. I have salespeople selling on social media and inboxing off stuff. I had a couple of salespeople for the Cardinals who got appointments off dating apps. It's all over the place. I've seen everything at this point. I'm of the persuasion that as long as it's not illegal, immoral, or unethical, everything's on the table. Do your thing. It's all on the table.
You're getting some chuckles over here because we have somebody who sold off a dating app also.
Some Quick Real Stories
I love it. Genius. It's great. I don't mean to be the old guy in the room here. Several years ago, texting to make a sale was highly frowned upon. I have a quick story. When the Cowboys were building AT&T, there was a guy named Eric Sudol who worked for the Cowboys for a lot of years. He was in suites for a long time. He worked for Memphis and then worked for the Cowboys. He took over as Chief Revenue Officer for Tepper down in Carolina.
You want to be having different parts of the sales process and set yourself up.
We do a lot of this. We were making outbound calls with their salespeople to set appointments for their suite sales for AT&T Stadium as it was coming online. He was arguing with me a little bit. I said, “Do you want to make a little bit of wager and see if your system works versus mine?” He goes, “Absolutely.” I said, “We'll pick an account and we'll go after that.” He goes, “We'll take this one.” I said, “All right. Give me the guy's number.” He goes, “What do you mean give you his number?”
It was this guy who was on Oprah Winfrey. He owned a big oil machinery company and sold heavy equipment to the oil industry. I said, “You said to go after one of your accounts. I want to prove my system works.” The wager was he would either buy a nice dinner at the most expensive restaurant in Columbus for my wife and me or I would buy it for him and his wife.”
He goes, “What are you doing?” I go, “I'm going to text this guy.” He goes, “You can't text him.” I go, “Why? Is there an international rule book against texting an executive?” He goes, “No. It won't work.” I go, “We'll see.” I texted the guy. The way I text people when I'm trying to prospect is I one-bubble it or two-bubble it. If you want somebody to respond, be annoying on text if you're going to text. That's your hack. Don't put the whole sentence. You got to be like, “Hey,” and press send. Say, “How are you?” and then press send. I played the game. I know it's annoying, but my job is to get his attention.
The guy responded. I said, “How are you?” The guy texted me back. He goes, “Who's this?” I said, “This is Lance.” He sent a question mark back. It was maybe 30 or 40 seconds, and I got a phone call. I said, “Eric, he's calling me back.” He goes, “Lance who?” The guy's name was Mike. I go, “Mike, I'm sorry. I'm Lance. I'm with the Dallas Cowboys. I was curious. Has anybody given you a tour of everything we're doing with the new Cowboy Stadium with the suites?” He goes, “No.”
I said, “You're a company. You fit the profile. I’d love to give you a personal tour.” He goes, “I'm in Dubai right now.” It was a Thursday. I had him on speaker, and I'm laughing at Eric. I go, “When do you get back?” He goes, “I get back Sunday.” I said, “You're probably straightening everything out in the office and everything. What about Wednesday?” He goes, “Yeah, I'd love to come down for a tour.” I said, “I'm going to be out of town. My assistant, Eric, would be able to give you a personal tour.” Eric ended up selling suites to the guy six months later. The point was I didn't make the sale. Eric made the sale. I generated it because I got the guy's attention.
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