How to Avoid Common Sales Mistakes

Periodic evaluation is crucial to any business’s success, especially when it comes to sales. Not only can reviewing your team’s performance spotlight opportunities to improve techniques, boost sales, and fuel growth, but it can also help avoid the problem of dropping winnable deals.

Check your sales processes against the following list of pitfalls. Could these six common mistakes be interfering with your organization’s sales rates?

1. Pursuing all prospects

Remember that not every lead is a qualified one. Prospects who pursue you may be undereducated about your service areas, what you sell, or even their own budgetary constraints. Therefore, it falls on your sales team to spend time identifying a prospect’s needs.

Ensure that your salespeople are asking questions that qualify leads early in the sales process. For example, a financial planner may ask, “Why don’t you tell me a bit about your financial goals, like budgeting or retirement savings?” Otherwise, they may wind up wasting paid hours chasing dead ends.

2. Underselling the value proposition

A crucial aspect of making a sale is knowing just what you’re selling. This goes beyond being able to recite product specifications. To hook clients and reel in more deals, your entire sales team must understand the value proposition.

Why exactly would a client be interested in—or even need—what you sell? What relevant pain points does your company resolve? Answering these questions is integral to any sales strategy. Many people are actually willing to overpay for products and services if they are emotionally attached to them or if the value exceeds the price in their minds. For example, a real estate agent’s value proposition isn’t just a new house—it’s the pride and happiness of finding a new place to call home.

3. Being married to a script

This may sound counterintuitive, but rigidly adhering to successful techniques can sometimes kill a sale. Many salespeople depend too much on scripts and can end up losing control of conversations as a result. In reality, no sales pitch will follow the same path every single time—regardless of what a sales flowchart indicates. Any experienced salesperson knows that few questions receive a solid “yes” or “no” answer and that they should always be prepared to hear an unusual objection in their next call.

That said, relying on proven phrases like a well-written value proposition isn’t inherently detrimental. In fact, your sales playbook should include a bulleted list of phrases or points your team members need to hit in every conversation. However, nobody enjoys speaking to a robot; a script is best utilized when memorized and adapted to each prospect’s perceived communication style.

4. Not communicating to the individual

Similarly, it’s crucial to give every prospect individualized attention. Remember that productivity apps and automated phone lines don’t accept deals—people do. As sales coach Shiera O’Brien writes for LinkedIn, “If clients feel and believe they have a relationship with you, it’s because of your rapport-building skills. At that point, the trust begins to build, and they will commit time and effort to you.” In other words, people are far more likely to accept deals from people they like, respect, and enjoy talking to.

Strive to connect with prospects early in every conversation (beyond a simple “How’s your day going?”). Listen well to details like upcoming vacations or a new car, then document them in your CRM. Recalling this information in a future conversation can help prospects feel that you have formed a valuable relationship with them, which may motivate them to choose you over a competitor.

Also, remember that stories, not stats, make sales. Communicate with a compelling voice, relate your personal experience with a product, and share client satisfaction testimonies. Providing sensory details can help prospects visualize themselves with your product or service—this is a hook any good salesperson can tug on.

5. Giving up

According to the sales consulting firm Marketing Donut, almost half of all salespeople admit defeat after just one attempt at following up with a prospect. However, they also found that 80 percent of sales happen only after the fifth touchpoint. This proves that the best salesperson is often not the most talented but the most persistent. Encourage your team to pursue objections and offer tools to overcome them—for example, they could recommend a payment plan to clients who deem your product beyond their price cap.

Be sure to follow up for referrals as well—these are far more likely to convert to clients than cold calls. In fact, a BNI.com survey found that 73 percent of companies get most of their business from networking and referrals.

6. Hesitating to request an order

A salesperson can deliver an amazing pitch to prospects and still fail to make a crucial leap: asking for their business. Don’t hold back when it’s time to get a payment. If you have kept someone hooked long enough to communicate the price of a product or service, assume that you have earned the right to request an order. The worst that will happen is they will say no.

But remember that “no” isn’t the end of the road. Declined or delayed offers give you the opportunity to uncover and handle any objections you may have missed throughout the sales process. And even if you deem a sale unwinnable, you can always transition into a referral request.

TAKE ACTION:
Review these six common mistakes with your team to boost your sales rates and promote growth in your organization.