Sales is art.
In order to be a good salesperson, one must be both talented and skilled.
Just as athletes need to practice, take risks, make mistakes, and learn from them to become masters of their craft, so too do salespeople.
There are some common mistakes that nearly everyone makes during their sales career. When trying to win a sale, salespeople often exaggerate, overestimate, misinterpret, and otherwise miss the mark.
To help you make sales more easily, here is a list of 16 mistakes that salespeople often make, so that you can avoid them.
1. Not listening and talking too much
When you are trying to sell something, you may have the urge to talk a lot about the benefits and features of your product. You may also want to flaunt your knowledge about the product. However, it is important to remember that you should not be pushy when selling something.
Salespeople who are pushy don’t tend to be effective. Those who are considerate are more likely to be successful. And, let’s be honest, you’re not the only one selling!
Instead of only talking, try listening more and asking more open-ended questions. You should aim to spend 60% of the conversation listening, and only 40% talking.
According to a study, top sales professionals who close deals in the business-to-business market typically allow their prospects to speak 57% of the time, while they talk only 43% of the time.
If you want to better understand your customer’s needs and tailor your offerings, try listening more and asking targeted questions. This will also help you get to know them as individuals, including their preferences and tastes. Showing that you care about them will go a long way.
Listening to potential customers and asking questions enables you to learn about their main pain points and how you can solve them. This is especially valuable during the prospecting stage of the sales process.
2. Offering too much for nothing
Some salespeople become an unpaid consultant by offering too much help for nothing in an effort to win the customer.
Although being helpful is good, there should be limits. Prospects often take advantage of sales reps by asking for information and advice, even when they do not plan to buy anything.
Don’t forget that information is power!
Do not try to win over the customer by giving too much information without getting anything in return. Instead, offer solutions to problems in the form of your sales offering.
Talking about solutions…
3. Not focusing on the solution
This is the most important tip, even though it may be old.
As a salesperson, your natural inclination is to boast about all the great features of your product or service. However, this is not effective in making a sale.
Instead of focusing on the smaller details of your product, it is better to focus on how your product can solve the most critical problems that your prospect is facing.
For example, you’re selling people management (HR) consultancy. A better way to explain how your consultancy can help, is rather than describing what seminars, workshops and employee-development handbooks you offer, is to say how it can decrease staff turnover and increase quarterly KPI achievement rates.
Your solution provides a clear, immediate benefit that will encourage your potential customers to purchase!
Your prospects are more interested in what you can do for them, rather than how you do it.
I am saying that having features is not as important as having benefits because benefits are what people want.
4. Focusing on price not value
People buy value, not price.
If you think that lowering the price will increase sales, you are mistaken. It is time to change your perspective.
Initially, offering deep discounts and promotions may bring in customers, but this type of customer is only looking for a bargain and will leave as soon as they find a better deal elsewhere.
Do you really need that?
Even though most customers traditionally care about price, they will only buy a product if it has value to them. If the value is substantial, customers will be willing to pay more for the product.
The prospect just needs to be reminded that buying cheaper items often leads to higher costs in the long term due to poor quality. Buying more expensive, higher quality items means more value and lower costs down the road.
5. Making promises you can’t keep
Overpromising and underdelivering equals mere lying in business.
Most customers will eventually figure out that they have been deceived and react accordingly. Even if you’re trying to sell something, lying is a terrible way to start any relationship. Inflating your product or service’s capabilities or, even worse, hiding limitations or special conditions, won’t get you very far. Most customers will eventually realize they’ve been deceived and react appropriately.
Would you want to spend your money on lies? I don’t think so.
But how do you sell then? Here are two suggestions:
- Instead of over-promising, let the prospects sell to themselves. You can do it by asking the right questions that’ll gently push the prospect to the right direction. In the end, they’ll convince themselves that they need your product.
- Another way is particularly suitable for the free trial stage. To make sure your prospects are pleasantly surprised, you can actually under promise and over deliver. If the expectations are low, but the product can actually do more, then prospects will be blown away with the experience they get. This will help you win them over during the next sale stage.
A dishonest sale is worse than no sale at all. If customers discover issues you failed to mention, they will not only take their business elsewhere, but also tell others about the bad experience, hurting your reputation and future sales.
6. Not having an intention to close a sale
There are a lot of talented salespeople who focus on making sales pitches and creating slideshows, rather than on selling.
While sales skills and the ability to close deals are important, they are not the only things that matter.
This is blunt advice, but it is important to remember that you have to actually ask your prospect to buy if you want to make a sale. The sooner you do this in the sales process, the better.
The only way to close a sale is to go ahead and do it, confidently declaring your intent from the start.
7. Not following a sales discovery call structure
If you don’t have a sales strategy, you’re wasting your time and not working efficiently. A sales discovery call structure can help you win a customer. Having a well-defined sales structure helps you optimize the entire prospecting process.
What are the core problems of my customers?
If you want to improve your sales hit rate, you should create an effective sales discovery call structure. This means researching your prospect and their industry before getting on a call, and listening more than you talk while on the call.
8. Selling to people who don’t need it
If someone doesn’t need your product, it is useless to them.
Sales to people who do not need your product may look like a good idea, but it often goes wrong. The buyer feels regret and angry, thinking they have been tricked, which is not good for the image of the brand.
A rule to avoid this common sales mistake:
To improve your customer profiling, focus on the prospective client’s needs and create an experience that they would want to buy into. Segment your leads and identify which ones have the highest chance of converting. You can also use AI applications to make it easier to track and convert leads.
9. Talking more than the prospect
A common error salespeople make is talking more than the prospect during a phone call. In fact, statistics show that the best salespeople only speak 43% of the time. The remaining 57% of the time they listen patiently.
Then they show how their product addresses the prospect’s needs. The top sales executives are successful because they know how to listen to their prospects. They understand what the person is saying and then offer a solution that will help them. This process requires excellent communication skills.
10. Pouring product information all at once
It is common to try and give a customer all the information you have at once when trying to make a sale. However, nine times out of ten, you will lose the sale because of your aggressive sales pitch.
If you talk too much on a call, people will lose interest. The best thing to do is to get the customer to tell you about the problems they have in your area of marketing/servicing, and then offer viable solutions.
A rule to avoid this common sales closing mistake:
Before getting on a sales call, structure it effectively and keep your focus on the essential information. Understand that your prospect already has loads of information, so try to move towards closing the deal.
What he wants instead is information that will help him make a decision. Present information that is relevant to him and will have the most impact on his decision.
11. Talking just about features, not benefits
You should not spend time describing the features of your product if your prospect is not interested in them.
How to avoid this sales mistake:
This is a common sales mistake. To avoid it, you need to focus on the prospect’s problem and offer them a solution through your product. People want your product to help them achieve their desired outcome.
People are interested in products that will make their life easier and are worth the time and money investment. By revealing how the product or service will ease their life and focus on the post-sales experience, you will be more likely to earn their interest.
12. Discussing price at the beginning
Imagine picking up a sales call, and the sales rep starts saying:
“We have an expense management product which starts with $100 per month.”
“Wait, what?”
The most important skill for salespeople is patience. It’s a mistake to try to close a deal too quickly. Don’t give information about the price too soon.
How to avoid this sales mistake?
Let the conversation with the prospective customer continue until they either ask about pricing or mention it themselves. Let the value of your product be what drives their decision. Once they have decided to purchase, present them with a pricing plan that meets their needs.
13. Killing sales with words
If you’ve used the words “roadmap” or “billion” during a sales call and still managed to close the deal, consider yourself lucky. Those are sales-killing words.
You should avoid the following sales killing words at all cost:
- Contract
- Free Trial
- Payment
- However
- Competitor
These words are vague, void, and convey no specific information. Be specific; cut the fluff.
14. Not personalizing the solution
Selling HR management software to a developer won’t close a deal if you don’t personalize your sales pitch. This is a common sales mistake, so make sure to tailor your sales approach to the individual you’re speaking with.
Before you arrange a sales call with a potential customer, do some research to find out more about them. This way, you can make sure that your pitch is relevant to their work or profession.
15. Not handling objections well
NO.
The two-letter word that most sales reps hate is “no.” Disagreement is the last thing you want during a sales call, but the reality is different.
Prospects may not agree with you and may not want to do business with you.
A rule to avoid this common sales closing mistake:
Don’t get disheartened.
To handle objections in sales, show that you are open to disagreement and further discussion. Understand why the prospect isn’t attracted to the offer. Dig deeper into his problem and provide alternate solutions.
16. Not giving enough time to discuss further steps
A winning salesperson thinks about how to move the sale forward and guides the prospect to the next steps at the end of the call.
Stats show that a customer needs five continuous follow-ups before the transaction can be completed.
If you want to close more deals, you need to be able to confirm the next steps of buy-in with the customer. If you can’t do that, you’re just marketing the product and not selling it.
Conclusion: Hit or miss
In sales, it’s either you succeed in getting the customer’s attention from the start and close the deal, or you don’t.
If you don’t want to lose potential customers, you should avoid making these common sales mistakes. It’s always a good idea to keep working on your sales strategy and learn from your mistakes so you can improve if necessary.
The purchasing habits of contemporary consumers have evolved, as has the manner in which they obtain information on potential purchases. Nowadays, business-to-business buyers have access to extensive data sets on the products or services they are interested in and can conduct their own research before they even speak to a sales representative.
Almost 60% of decisions are made before buyers even speak to a salesperson on the phone.
As a sales representative, you will need to change your sales tactics. Traditional methods will not be effective. You should adopt new and innovative practices and attitudes.