1. Not Celebrating Rejections
There’s a tendency amongst sales people in thinking their target is to close a deal as quickly as possible, and rejections are met with disappointment.
With an industry average closing rate of 5% it’s no wonder most sales people either get burned out or leave the industry vowing never to return.
But in sales the objective is to get to a DECISION not a sale as quickly as possible whether its a yes or a no.
A rejection means, saved time, you can stop wasting your time with a prospect and move on to the next one.
2. Being Too Friendly
Especially to the novice Salesman it’s almost second nature to want to be overly friendly and spend too much time talking about irrelevant things thinking you’re doing a good job of building rapport.
How’s the weather? Omg, yes it’s soo hot here too.
While you definitely want to build rapport to gain your prospects trust, it’s important not to waste too much time delving into how your prospects weekend is going or how the weather is.
The truth is, we tend to go offtrack on a call, thinking we are making progress, but in reality we’re avoiding the hard and million dollar question, will you buy?
You’re not on this call to make a friend, you’re like a doctor and you’re here to diagnose a problem and offer a compelling solution that the prospect URGENTLY needs.
You need to have the mindset that they need you more than you need the sale!
3. Letting the Prospect dictate the conversation
Whoever controls the conversation controls the sale. PERIOD.
Too often sales people make the perilous mistake of letting the prospect take control of the flow of the conversation.
You have to make sure you dictate the direction of the conversation to reach your desired outcome.
4. Telling is not selling
A weak salesman tells, a good salesman EXPLAINS.
Too many salespeople love to talk about the features and benefits of their product.
The truth is NO ONE CARES.
Unless you can highlight the prospects’ pain points and explain how your product can alleviate this pain, it’s just wasted effort. You’re selling a solution not a product.
5. Sounding like a salesman
Everybody likes to buy but nobody likes being sold too and with scepticism being rampant on every call, sounding like a salesman when you introduce yourself will immediately trigger your prospect to put their guard up, and it’s an uphill battle from there on.
You need to sound like a professional consultant, don’t talk about yourself, nobody cares about you.
You need to talk about your prospect, how what your offering is helping them.
Before starting any communication with a prospect you need to clearly define what problem it is that your product is solving.
So for example with printing we have 3 issues: Price, Quality, Speed.
The Typical Salesman approach:
“Hi, my name is John, I work for XYZ company, and we have been in the market for 20 years, and we are offering printing services”
The Solution based approach with urge:
“Hey, I’m just giving you a quick call, because I wanted to save you money immediately on all your printing costs. Everyone in business needs to get things printed, and I can guarantee you the best prices at the highest quality right now ”
Continue with your solution to their pain point:
“I know that a busy professional like you needs to get things done fast, so i can also guarantee to give you a quote on any job within 2 hours from your request ”
