T OP 12 M ISTAKES S ALESPEOPLE THAT M AKE
A Special Report
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Top 12 Mistakes that Salespeople Make
Category A: Too focused on the sales process (ignoring the customer’s buying process)
1. Selling too fast
2. Failing to dig for the deeper needs and causes
3. Letting the customer (or your competitors) define the solution 4. Being an “expert” when the customer need a “collaborator”
5: Failing to help customers recognize the importance of your differentiators 6: Giving empty promises around “solutions”
7. Believing that “caring” about the customer is a differentiator 8: Ignoring the competition
9: Mistaking a price request as a buying signal
Category B: Treating purchases as simple decisions 10. Dancing only with the one who brung ya!
11. Treating all decision makers the same
12. Assuming all decision makers define the problem the same way
“Our Business Is Improving Yours”
1457 North US Highway 1, Suite 24 Ormond Beach, FL 32174
Tel: 386-898-0007 Int’l: 800-403-9379 Fax: 386-898-0004 www.learningoutsourcegroup.com
Top 12 Mistakes that Salespeople Make
Most mistakes salespeople make fall into two categories:
a) Being too focused on their sales process (and ignoring the customer’s buying
process). Salespeople have been taught to focus on the four or five steps of selling. They haven’t been taught the buying process that customers typically go through, and how to deal with customers in different buying steps. That leads to a lot of mismatches between what the salesperson is trying to do and what is needed to help the customer through their buying process.
b) Treating purchases as simple decisions. If your sales situations are anything like mine, instances of simple sales—involving only one decision maker—are more and more rare.
Yet many salespeople seem satisfied dealing with one contact at a prospective client, and miss opportunities to create multiple inside supporters.
Here are some of the biggest mistakes I see in both of these categories, and how they impact your odds of winning a sale. (Developing the skill to avoid them is the subject of my company’s Sales Training Workshop.)
Category A:
Too focused on the sales process (ignoring the customer’s buying process)
Mistake #1 – Selling too fast
How can a salesperson “sell too fast”? Isn’t speed the way you make more sales and get bigger commissions? In fact, just the opposite is true. By “too fast,” I mean that salespeople get ahead of where the customer is in their buying process.
Anyone making a major purchase—including you—goes through predictable stages of first recognizing a need, learning about their options, making the purchase, and ultimately
determining the value they got. I divide each of those four phases into two steps, as shown in the figure below.
The Buying Process
If you don’t match your sales strategy to the stage of buying that the customer is in, you risk alienating the prospect and losing the sale. For example you can end up pitching too much information too soon. If you launch into a description of your product’s or service’s capabilities and features when the customer is still wondering if they need to make a change at all, the benefits of those capabilities will be totally lost on the customer. And you may end up
emphasizing capabilities that the customer later decides they don’t want—meaning they will de- value what you’ve stressed as your differentiators.
Mistake #2 – Failing to dig for the deeper needs and causes
Usually, the first topic discussed with a prospective client is the issue/need that is of greatest concern for the prospect at that time — the need that’s most developed from the customer’s perspective. But for all you know, the first need they mention may be something identified by one of your competitors in a meeting the day before! By failing to probe for the second need, you may be allowing your competitor to define your customer’s vision of a solution. Not good.
Clients usually have more than one need, and the second need is almost always less developed and less explicit than the first need. Same goes for the third and fourth needs. Exposing these additional needs and underlying root causes of problems will be critical for developing a solution that the client perceives as superior to all other options.
Mistake #3 – Letting the customer (or your competitors) define the solution
Customers may come to you with preconceived notions about what they want in a solution for their needs. If those requirements come solely from the customer—or, worse still, from a competitor who got in the door before you—9 times out of 10, you’re going to lose that sale.
Ideally, you would like to be the first salesperson to approach your prospect so you can help them develop or refine their list of solution criteria. If you’re not the first one in the door, you can still shift the odds in your favor if you have the skill to redirect your prospect’s thinking so they view their needs (and therefore their solution requirements) in a new way.
Mistake #4 – Being an “expert” when the customer needs a
“collaborator”
Ironically, salespeople are often passive while the customer is defining their needs (see Mistake
#3)… but then suddenly become a vocal “expert” when the customer is shaping the ideal solution. Such salespeople step in and start describing their product or solution in great detail, assuming the customer will see it as a perfect fit, which is unlikely.
From now on, let your competitors make this mistake — not you! Rarely will a need identified by the customer without your involvement match exactly the strengths of your offering.
Salespeople need to first act more like a doctor, diagnosing customer needs (or at least
confirming the diagnosis)—then switch to a collaborative approach, working with the customer to define a vision of an ideal solution.
Mistake #5 – Failing to help customers recognize the importance of your differentiators
A key part of the customer’s buying process is comparing your offering to those of other competitors. If they don’t understand what your differentiators are or the importance of those differentiators, they will revert to a “commodity” mindset, thinking only about price.
You need to help shape your customer’s decision-making criteria to include the unique strengths of your company’s product or service. That way, later on — when the prospect shops around — they’ll recognize that certain factors they consider important are real strengths of your offering.
In this way, you design a customer-focused solution that sets the ground rules in your favor. You want to answer the question, “Why should we buy from you?” before the customer asks it, and your answer should include specific reasons that are important to your customer because they’re connected to that customer’s needs.
Mistake #6 – Giving empty promises around “solutions”
Many salespeople have the mindset that they are “solutions providers.” But you can’t tell it by their sales proposals or presentations or the pitches they make over the phone. Take a look at most sales proposals and presentations—or listen to most conversations between salespeople and prospects—and what you’ll see or hear is a thorough description of predefined features/benefits of a product or service. There is usually nothing about the customer problem that the “solution”
is trying to solve!
To stand out from your competitors, fill that gap. When a customer tells you they have a need, first understand as much as you possibly can about that need. Provide clear descriptions of the problems, challenges, or opportunities you’ve uncovered (using the customer’s language), and link the differentiating capabilities of your solution to the specific needs of that customer.
Mistake #7 – Believing that “caring” about the customer is a differentiator
In today’s world, every decent salesperson is good at giving the impression that they care about the customer. So much so that it is now a commodity — “caring” no longer differentiates you in the customer’s eyes.
If you want to be differentiated in how you deal with your customers, you have to learn to establish a new sales process that demonstrates through action a better understanding of customer needs than your competitors. And you do that by having better understanding their buying process. (Our sales training shows you how.)
Mistake #8 – Ignoring the competition
A hallmark of professional selling is the assumption that you will have a lot of competition. Even if you have done business with a prospect in the past and have a good relationship with a former contact, do not assume that will guarantee you a sale the next time around. Always assume that the prospect will shop around.
If you initiated contact with a customer and guided them through the first steps of their buying process (holding off on your sales pitch until you and they fully understand their needs), then you will likely be in a very strong position. You will have a deep knowledge of all of their needs.
having collaborated in shaping their mental picture of an ideal solution in ways that gives you a major edge on your competitors.
However, when prospects call you and you have had no prior contact with them, you must find out where they are in the buying process. Was a competitor the first one in their door? If so, the competitor has most likely influenced their criteria, and you’ll have to work hard to help shape a different vision in the customer’s mind. It’s time for a different competitive sales strategy.
Mistake #9 – Mistaking a price request as a buying signal
A “sell too fast” problem can be exacerbated if you mistake a prospect’s first request for a price quote as a buying signal. Prospects often first wonder “How much is your solution?” early in their buying process, when they are trying to balance the seriousness of the problem against the cost of resolving it. They are, in fact, trying to determine whether the need that exists is
important enough to solve. Salespeople who mistake this request for a price as a buying signal may assume their buyer is further along in the buying process than is actually the case—and therefore jump to pitching a solution long before the customer is ready to hear it.
Category B: Treating Purchases as Simple Decisions
I haven’t run into a major purchase decision that involved only one person in a long, long time.
Have you? Yet many salespeople talk to only one person in a prospective client company, failing to find out what is important to the other decision makers. This failure to appreciate what roles different people play in complex purchasing decisions causes many sales mistakes.
Mistake #10 – Dancing only with the one who brung ya!
I’ve seen it happen hundreds of time. A salesperson has a great meeting with a contact at a potential customer, comes away full of confidence, and thereafter continues to groom only that one contact. (They are assuming the sale is simple and believe their one contact can “make it happen.” A natural human tendency is to want to simplify that which is complex.)
In a complex sale, your single most powerful weapon is going to be information—and because, by definition, many people are involved in a complex sale, you won’t have a full arsenal if you only contact one person. You need to get to the second decision maker as quickly as possible in the buying process—and then get to the third and fourth and fifth.… Only when you know all the players and what is important to each one can you present your solution in a way that addresses all their concerns.
Mistake #11 – Treating all decision makers the same
At any given point in time, it’s likely that the multiple decision makers involved in a complex purchasing decision will be at different steps in the buying process. That means that you must sell to each member of the team in a different way. A decision maker that is just starting to recognize a problem and its seriousness needs help diagnosing the need. A decision maker who is trying to define a solution needs an “architect” to help design that solution. A decision maker who is comparing alternative solution providers needs proof that you’re the best choice. And so on. Work with your contact to determine where each buyer is in the buying process.
Mistake #12 – Assuming all decision makers define the problem the same way
Your ability to win a complex sale will rest in large part on your ability to fully understand your customer’s needs. But don’t for a minute think that your customer is doing a good job of defining those needs themselves. The leadership book For Your Improvement: A Guide for Development and Coaching cites research from a number of different studies. The finding: 90% of the
problems of middle managers and above are ambiguous. It’s neither clear what the real problem is, nor what the solution ought to be. And the higher up the organization someone goes the more ambiguous the issues are.
This ambiguity comes from both (a) a lack of understanding of the underlying issues that are causing the “vague discontent” with the status quo and (b) little awareness of the true impact of
those issues. Furthermore, each decision maker will likely be looking at only a part of the problem. That’s why with complex buying decisions you often end up dealing with multiple decision makers, each having an imperfect and different understanding of the problem.
If you can tap into this lack of clarity by helping the prospect identify the root causes and develop a shared mental image of a solution, you will significantly improve your odds of winning the sale. You need to talk to as many decision makers as you can. The in-depth knowledge of the customer’s needs becomes a “bargaining chip” for getting in to meet with higher-level decision makers and having more influence over how the customer defines both the problem and the ideal solution.
Remember, 9 times out of 10 the salesperson who wins is the one who defines the customer’s true problem.
Learn How to Avoid These Mistakes
TopLine Leadership is in the business of training salespeople and sales managers how to avoid these Top 12 Mistakes. For years, the focus of sales training has been on the selling process — ignoring customer buying behavior. Our sales training teaches you how to sell more and sell faster by slowing down your sales process. Tomorrow’s big winners in sales will be those who learn to join the customer's buying process.
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