Do you want to grow sales? Because if you do, your business sure will smile! But before you can learn how to grow sales, first you need to learn what mistakes to avoid.
Growing sales doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be a great salesperson. You just need to avoid these common sales mistakes:
1. Don’t forget to qualify
Before you can sell, you have to find someone to sell to; whether it’s someone coming to you or whether you are finding someone to sell to, the first thing you have to do is qualify your potential customer.
If you forget to do the qualifying step, a large percentage of your time will be wasted on potential customers who don’t really need your offering or can’t afford it.
Every prospect isn’t equal. Through qualifying, you’ll get a better understanding of what each customer wants, how he or she wants it, and what his or her budget is. Most importantly, you’ll be able to figure out if you are talking to the person who can actually make the decision.
If you are not sure how to qualify people, all you have to do is ask them simple questions such as:
• What are you looking for specifically?
• What’s your budget?
• When are you looking to start?
2. Don’t be a “yes” person
One of the biggest sales mistakes you can make aside from qualifying customers is saying “yes” to almost everything the customer says or wants. Although nobody likes to get “No” for an answer. Allowing the customers to get a “No” from you has its benefits. This way you increase the value of “Yes” when the time is right.
If what a customer wants is profitable to you and you can deliver, say yes. If the request is unreasonable, say no. By setting this precedent early on, you’ll have more happy customers.
3. Don’t offer too much information
The more information you offer to people, the more likely they’ll be confused. When people are confused, they don’t become customers.
Learn to get your message out quickly and concisely as it will be easier to understand. Trying to use sophisticated language or talking in technical jargon isn’t a smart idea.
When pitching customers, make sure you only tell them what they need and want to know. People have short attention spans, so be careful about dragging things on.
4. Don’t oversell
Similar to avoiding offering potential customers too much information, you will be wise to not oversell. If you’re too pushy, you’ll turn off a lot of people.
You must be casual with your sales techniques and act like you don’t care to make the sale. At the end of the day, if your product or service is that good, the person you are selling to should feel privileged to use it. You can always create a sense of urgency without having to act desperate.
5. Don’t lose sight of the goal
You’re in sales meetings to make sales. So, you should stay away from time-wasters such as chatting about random topics with a potential customer? If you must humor your potential customer let it be a topic closely related to your product/service, with of course your sales goal in mind.
Since you don’t have people’s undivided attention forever, ensure you are keeping track of time to get your message across as quickly as possible. If you have spare time after that, you can start chatting about common interests as that will equally help build a stronger connection, but you shouldn’t do that until you get all of your major points across and have the person on the hook.
6. Don’t Argue with a potential customer
Even though this may sound obvious, many sales reps fall prey to this mistake.
When a prospect’s objections become unreasonable or even illogical, it’s easy to lose temper and start defending your sincerity. But don’t. Simply stay away from sales arguments
You are likely to lose the sale arguing with potential customers, almost every single time it occurs!
If you disagree with what they have to say, keep silent or say simply “I understand your point of view.” Additionally, you could ask questions to clarify their position, paraphrase their statements, but never argue.
7. Don’t make promises you can’t keep
No matter how much you want to sell, deception is a bad way to start any relationship. Amplifying your product or service capabilities, or even worse – hiding limitations or special conditions, will not take you far. Since you wouldn’t like to spend your money on deception, your customers wouldn’t either!
Instead of over-promising, lead the prospects in a series of questions that sheds more light on the solution they need and why they need your product or service to be that solution. It is better to surprise prospects by underpromising and over-delivering. If prospects’ expectations are low, but the product or service delivers more value, then prospects will be blown away with the experience they get. This will help you win them over during the next sale stage.
Nonetheless, it’s better to sell nothing, than to make a dishonest sale. Because if your customers later find out about a problem you “forgot to mention”, you will lose the customer, reputation and further sales.
8. Don’t talk past the sell
After you close a sales deal, you need to learn to stop talking. People are likely to lose sales deals when they keep talking after the potential customer is ready to become a customer. They do this by saying something thoughtless, which makes that person think twice.
Learn to be quiet, and an active listener after someone tells you he or she wants to be a customer.
Conclusion
Remember, you don’t have to necessarily be a good salesperson to close a sales deal. You just have to avoid the mistakes listed above. If you can do that, you’ll start closing more sales deals for your budding business and making more money.
So, don’t focus your time on trying to become an exceptionally great salesperson. Simply focusing on avoiding these eight common mistakes will help in your ‘growing sales’ journey.
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