Closing deals isn’t easy. Sometimes those sales conversations simply don’t go your way. There are many reasons this can happen. But from my experience, I’ve spotted the same common sales mistake happening time and time again.
The good news is that it’s relatively easy to fix too. We all make mistakes and it’s important to learn from them. As wise old Confucius pointed out, “A man [or woman] who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is committing another mistake.”
In this blog, you’ll discover the most common mistakes sales professionals make. And importantly, you’ll find easy ways to change that behaviour for future successful sales.
The Top 5 Most Common Sales Mistakes
1. Moving Too Fast
Believe it or not, there are many similarities between dating and sales. And the biggest mistake made in both of these fields, is pushing for too much too soon. Just as you shouldn’t suggest marriage on a first date, you shouldn’t expect a potential customer to commit to a deal during a first sales conversation.
You need to build the relationship slowly to ensure they’re feeling comfortable. Don’t push too quickly – a common flaw of sales representatives. Take people through a slow-moving sales process whilst you’re building your relationship. It’s imperative that you wait for your potential customer to be totally comfortable and at ease before you consider finalising the sales cycle.
2. Not Asking Enough Questions
You may have honed your sales pitch and developed a pitch perfect script, but all that passionate patter about your amazing product isn’t the way to draw in a potential buyer.
Around 70% of what you say in a sales conversation needs to be questions not answers. You’re aiming to build trust and credibility and the key to that comes from the questions you ask rather than what you’re telling people about.
By asking targeted, open ended questions on a sales call you’ll understand the customer’s business needs better. Asking direct questions will help you close deals more effectively than by making statements. The other person needs to give you a direct answer, and that information will be helpful to you. For example, asking for details about their company’s decision making process will ensure you speak to the decision-makers that are able to progress the buyer’s journey along the sales pipeline. Asking the right questions provides the key to qualifying leads.
3. Not Using Active Listening
The other aspect of asking questions, is listening to the answer. Not just hearing it, but actively listening to it. That means truly engaging with your potential customer, using eye contact and asking follow up questions to their responses.
By asking pertinent questions and using active listening, you’ll gain a more insightful picture of their position, pain points and customer needs. A survey into B2B sales professionals showed that in the most effective sales conversations, the potential buyer spoke more than the sales person. 57% of the time, the potential customer spoke and the sales rep for only 43%. That means that for 57% of the time (or more), you need to be active listening to the other person.
Understanding the formula for change helps you to realise whether this relationship has potential. What’s the formula for change, you say?
Formula for change: dissatisfaction x vision + first steps is > resistance
- If the person isn’t dissatisfied with their current position, they’re not going to buy
- If they haven’t got a vision of working well with you, they’re not going to buy
- If they don’t know the first steps to take to engage with you, they’re not going to buy
- If resistance is high, you need to excel at presenting a compelling sales argument as to why you should work together.
The way to convey vision and expose dissatisfaction is by asking questions and truly listening to the answers.
4. Selling Features, Not Providing Tailored Solutions
By asking the right questions and truly listening to their replies, you’ll understand your lead’s pain points and specific needs. Your focus needs to showing how your product or service provides their ideal solution. As a sales person, your instinct is likely to be selling the amazing features of your product/ service. But here’s the thing, that’s not going to close sales.
For sales success, you need to present obvious benefits that will urge your prospects to buy! Be upfront about how your offering will help, but never over-promise.
Say you’re part of the sales team providing IT solutions, for example. Your focus in the sales call shouldn’t be on the innovative new features of the software, but how it can streamline processes and make teams more efficient. Showing the benefits to the business – cost efficiency, improved operations or better communication – will have more influence over their purchasing decisions than hearing about the technical features.
5. Being Unprepared for Sales Calls
It’s so important to do your homework. You may have a great template to follow for your sales calls, but if you want to understand a person’s specific needs, pain points and business then you have to be able to tailor your call to them.
Preparation will help you communicate better and ask the right questions so that you can tailor your offering, customise your sales pitch and present the right benefits to connect with that particular prospect. It’ll help you to build that all important rapport and connection.
Check out their company website for starters. Connect with them on social media (LinkedIn being the key platform) and gain insights into their priorities, views and areas of interest, as well as any common connections. This information becomes part of your sales toolkit that you can draw upon during your sales call.
An important part of this preparation process, and one that’s all too often forgotten, is thinking about how to handle objections in the sales cycle. It’s a vital sales skill. Don’t argue back! You need to stay cool, show that you understand their objections and recognise their perspective.
Discover how to prepare for a sales discovery call along with the 22 best sales questions to ask.
Key Takeaways: Common Sales Mistakes
You can’t hurry love, and you can’t hurry business relationships either.
The best salespeople build long-term relationships with their customers and this takes time. By building trust, credibility and respect, you’ll draw your potential buyer along the sales pipeline. Ultimately, that’ll lead not just to a sale, but also to referrals and repeat purchases.
Sales management need to help their sales teams to learn from their mistakes. By reviewing sales calls, you can adjust your sales strategy and improve sales performance for future interactions. This continual adjustment and improvement of sales performance can only benefit your profitability and bottom line as well as boosting confidence and belief in your sales people.
Everyone makes mistakes, it’s an integral part of learning. But that’s the key takeaway – learn from the sales mistakes and do things differently next time.
Phil Chantry, Business Coach, can help you to improve your sales process and ensure you make better sales calls. Get in touch to find out how we can work together and boost your sales.
