In late May, Bill Caskey, founder of Indianapolis-based sales training firm Caskey, hosted a seminar on building a sales “Dream Team.” In the days leading up to that seminar, Caskey published a series of videos exploring five major areas in which he consistently sees sales reps struggling and his tips for addressing those challenges. Here’s a brief look at each of the issues along with Caskey’s recommendations for dealing with them:

Creating an atmosphere for the truth. It’s a rare prospect who willingly opens up and shares details of his or her organization’s problems with a sales rep, particularly one just met. Instead, reps find themselves face-to-face with lies, half-truths, and omissions as buyers guard against giving away too much information. Caskey’s tip: Stop selling and start inquiring. Stop persuading and convincing the prospect to buy and instead engage in a dialogue aimed at understanding. Let selling come second to a genuine desire to help solve a problem and prospects will begin to naturally open up.

Stumbling through discovery. Most reps are “rotten” at discovery, says Caskey. They struggle to find out the real problems or pains their customers are experiencing, instead relying on stale, generic questions like, “What keeps you up at night?” Caskey’s tip: At your next sales meeting, create a list of all the problems your product or service solves. It might be five things; it might be 30. “At subsequent meetings, don’t talk about your forecast, talk about how your salespeople are dealing with some of these problems,” says Caskey. Are they finding them? Is the prospect admitting them? What questions work well to get the prospect to open up?

Calling too low. Many sales reps call too low in an organization, resulting in longer sales cycles, an incomplete understanding of the organization’s problems, and frequent no-sales. Sure, your reps ask about the decision making process but you may as well not bother because you’re going to get a standard answer that’s not entirely true. Caskey’s tip: It’s not about the organizational chart or the title; its about the problem and the people who care directly and indirectly about that problem. From now on, when your reps come back from a call, ask them to draw a chart showing the relevant problems in the center and, working outward in rings, the people affected by those problems.

Getting mired in price discussions. “Your price is too high!” “Your competitor is 10 percent less.” If you can shave off 3 percent we’ve got a deal. If you’ve been in sales longer than an hour, these phrases should sound familiar. The problem is, many reps get sucked in and start competing on price, not value. Caskey’s tip: Monetize everything. Define the problem in its entirety, and then convert it to dollars to show prospects the cost of their problem. Often, they don’t know. Once you do this, conversations tend to move away from the cost of the solution and on to what the prospect will save. Need help in this area? Ask a finance expert in your organization to come in and talk to your team about how to monetize problems.

Keeping the funnel full. A funnel full of high quality prospects usually translates into reps making quota. Few reps, however, have a defined plan for keeping their funnels full and so the amount of potential business in their funnels tends to fluctuate considerably. Caskey’s tip: Ask everyone on your team to write a Personal Business Plan. Write it by the year, by the quarter, and by the month. It should include actions they will take (not outcomes they expect) to ensure their funnels are constantly full. It should also include numbers how many cold calls they will make, how many referrals they’ll ask for, which trade shows they’ll attend, and so on. Sit down with each rep and review his or her plan, then follow up to ensure it’s being followed.