Do You Make These Seven Stupid Selling Mistakes?

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Submitted by Simon Hazeldine on Mon, 11/06/2007 - 10:22am.

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"Do You Make These Seven Stupid Selling Mistakes?"

- by Simon Hazeldine (MSc FInstSMM)
Author of Bare Knuckle Selling

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How many sales are you missing out on? How aware are you of
the errors that could be costing you orders, commission and
profits?

In the course of training and coaching salespeople I see the
same mistakes being made time and time again! Review your
performance against these seven areas and make sure that you
are not making mistakes that are costing you sales.

Seven of the most common mistakes that people make when
selling are:

1. Not planning and preparing

As obvious as this may appear very few salespeople plan and
prepare thoroughly enough. Far too many salespeople go into
a sales call without having fully considered what they are
going to do. Have you conducted background research on the
customer? Have you set very specific objectives for the
call? Have you got all of the information and materials
that you may need during the call with you? Have you
anticipated what the customer may ask you? By failing to
prepare you are preparing to fail. The elite of the selling
profession are properly planned and prepared before every
sales call.

2. Not getting rapport

Psychological research shows that people are more likely to
buy from someone if they like them. Learning how to develop
unconscious rapport with your customers is a powerful way of
helping them to like you and to want to do business with
you. Utilising the technology of Neuro Linguistic
Programming is a very powerful way to do this. This
approach is far more effective (and genuine) than pretending
to be interested in what the customer is interested in.
Many people make the mistake of thinking that rapport is
something that you "do" to another person. True rapport
emerges from the interaction between the salesperson and
their customer. You have rapport with the customer and they
have rapport with you. In this state communication flows
easily and the salesperson is able to understand what the
customer wants and needs more effectively.

3. Not listening to what is important to the customer

Having established rapport it becomes easier to properly
understand what is important to the customer. Far too many
salespeople are focussed on themselves and their agenda.
You must get your attention where it should be - on the
customer.

It is only when you understand what is important to the
customer that you are in the position to sell them anything!
Attempting to sell before having done this is a waste of
time.

Your job is to firstly understand what is important to the
customer and then secondly to see of your products and/or
services can help them.

4. Talking about your product or service too much

Sorry to be blunt but your customer isn't actually very
interested in you or your product or service. What they are
interested in is what your product or service will do for
them.

Far too many salespeople spend far too much time talking at
the customer about their product or service. A lengthy one
way speech about all of the features of your product or
service usually results in a rather bored customer. Telling
is not selling.

You need to focus your presentation about how the specific
benefits that your product or service possess help the
customer to solve their specific problems and help them to
get exactly what they want.

If you don't fully understand the customers individual and
specific requirements then you shouldn't be talking about
your product or service at all. It is only after you have
this understanding that you are in a position to know if the
customer may need your help.

5. Not understanding how much
money the customer has to spend

If you don't know what the customer's budget is, how do you
know how much money they have to spend with you? You need
to know specifically how much money the customer has
available to solve the specific problems or challenges you
have identified.

For a salesperson to be in a position to close the sale you
need to know that your customer needs, wants and can afford
your product or service. Tackling the subject of money
quite early in the call will also help you to separate the
customer who is likely to buy from the customer who is just
looking for lots of free advice at your expense.

A sales is not a sale until the money is in your bank
account! Make sure you understand what the customer's
budget is!

6. Not closing the sale early enough

If you aren't closing frequently then you aren't selling -
you are having a conversation. Research shows that firstly
it can take several closing attempts to finally close a sale
and that secondly the customer expects the salesperson to
ask for the order.

Perhaps due to a fear of rejection salespeople don't make
sufficient efforts to close. Instead they rely on carrying
on talking about their product or service in the vain hope
that the customer will eventually offer to buy something.

By trial closing throughout the call ("Does this make sense
so far?"), you get constant feedback about the customer's
readiness to proceed. You can then move up to test closing
("If you were going to install this where would you site
it?") before moving onto the final close ("Shall we get the
paperwork done then?") and signing up the order.

You must be a strong closer if you want to prosper in
today's competitive world. If you walk out of the sale
without having closed you may find out that your competitor
didn't make the same mistake.

7. Not following up after the sale

How to lose sales and annoy customers in one easy step -
don't do what you said you were going to do. Accuracy, or
salespeople doing what they said they were going to do, was
one of two factors identified by extensive research as being
the most important contributors to customer satisfaction.

The salesperson who does exactly what they said they were
going to, follows up meetings in writing and delivers the
goods is a rarity these days.

If you always ensure you follow up you will get very happy
customers. A happy and satisfied customer is almost
impossible for your competitors to sell to. On the other
hand an unhappy customer is very easy to sell to. Make it
hard for your competitors - follow up!

The commercial world may be getting more and more
challenging. However, far too many salespeople are making
basic errors that are costing them business. Please make
sure that you aren't one of them.

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Simon Hazeldine is the author of the bestselling books
Bare Knuckle Selling (foreword by Joe Vitale) and
Bare Knuckle Negotiating (foreword by Duncan Banatyne)