'Mistakes people make when selling' - Transcript 

This is Nina Sunday, Managing Director of Brainpower Training.

Do your people make these mistakes when selling – not asking enough questions?

In fact, by asking questions you’re engaging your customer in a conversation and the worst thing you can do is to rush in with a solution and start telling your customer about your product. In fact, the second mistake is not describing the within or ‘what’s in it for me’ for the customer.

So it’s not a matter of doing product features but it’s really important to also add things like so ‘what that means to you is’ or ‘you won’t ever have to.’ So really adding the benefits every time we’re talking about the feature of a product or service.

The third mistake that people make when selling is not asking for the order.

And in this customer savvy world, it’s not about hard sell; it’s not even about asking hard sell closing questions.

Even as simple as ‘so would you like to take the next step?’ or ‘how would you like to move forward?’ or ‘it makes sense to me to place an order; what do you think?’ That question posed at the right time can really move the sale forward and make a difference.

Another mistake people make when selling is not giving post sale customer service.

In fact, many salespeople get distracted by the possibility of prospects, of new prospects with their incoming enquiries that they completely neglect a very profitable area of repeat business which are existing customers. In fact, existing customers are 5 to 7 times more profitable than marketing to new customers so to forget about giving post sale customer service is really forgetting about the opportunity to cross sell and up sell and repeat sell.

Another mistake people make is not qualifying are they talking to the decision maker or identifying are there multiple decision makers involved in this decision.

In fact, just because they’re speaking to one person doesn’t mean that there aren’t other people involved in that decision so it’s important to ask that question which is, ‘is there anyone else involved in making the decision?’ Another mistake salespeople make is not managing buyer resistance. And it’s really up to the salespeople, perhaps if you have a sales team, to brainstorm what are some typical replies we can make to typical objections that customers have to moving forward with your product or service. Managing buyer resistance, taking no for an answer. I mean if customers need, might need more time, they might need eleven touches, eleven contacts before they actually say yes – they’re actually read to take the next step, to place an order.

If you only make 10 touches, you’ve lost the sale.

So, many salespeople give up after the first ‘no’ or ‘I’m not ready to make a decision yet.’ Not leaving the voice mail on messages effectively can also lose you sales. And one of the biggest mistake salespeople make is getting distracted by activity that they think is leading to a sale but in fact, if you ask yourself the question, ‘am I really’, ‘have I really got call reluctance here’ or ‘customer contact reluctance’ then an honest answer might let you realise that anytime you’re not in front of a customer – either through phone or face to face; anytime you’re not talking to a customer and involved in other activity; are you getting distracted by that. So that’s probably the biggest trap, the biggest pitfall for anyone involved in sales is convincing themselves that activity is what can lead to a sale.