Sales in so many ways is like dating, right.
If you're doing things wrong on a date
your date doesn't tell you what you're doing wrong,
they just never reach out to you again,
and they disappear.
That may sound a little familiar
because that's exactly what happens to so many salespeople.
When we're making a consistent series of mistakes
during the sales process, your prospects
are not going to take the time to say
well, you know what?
Here are the five reasons that I've chosen
not to do business with you.
And three of those reasons were things that you did
that I think you should do differently.
Of course not, all they do is they disappear
or they just tell you this is great,
but the timing's not right.
Or I have to think about it.
They never give us direct feedback.
So as a result, we so rarely as salespeople
get the opportunity to understand what are those mistakes
that we are consistently making.
So in this video, I'm going to show you
the five biggest sales mistakes to avoid right now.
You must know these, check it out.
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Number One- Hoping for leads.
This is one of the most common
and strangely sounding obvious mistakes
that we see over and over and over again,
particularly in this moment,
there's a lot of transition.
There's a lot of crazy things going on in the world,
in the business world in particular.
And so what often happens is that
our lead generation kind of takes a back seat.
And so we start to just hope
that the leads are going to come in
or we hope that that little bit of stuff
that we're doing is going to pay off.
And as a result,
we see our sales take massive, massive dips.
Lead generation is just like what I talked about before,
where if you're doing something
and it's not connecting with prospects,
they're not going to say, hey, by the way
if you changed this language, you'd be a lot more effective.
Instead, we just don't get leads
and what we're doing doesn't work.
So what we need to do is have a consistent
and well thought through lead generation machine.
And we think of it as having your prospecting blueprint.
And so what we have to have is that strategy
from first identifying a prospect all the way
to getting them on the phone.
And then of course, once we get them on the phone
or on a Zoom, then what are we doing to actually close them?
But we need to have that whole process laid out
from when are we making the calls,
what does that script look like
to what are our emails look like,
how are we potentially automating those outreaches?
And how are we reaching out to them maybe
by social media, with LinkedIn or Facebook,
mapping out that whole process
and taking the hoping out of sales.
Because if you are hoping for leads,
you will be broke very, very soon.
Number Two- Trying to educate your prospect.
Now, I know that there are a bunch of gurus out there
that say you need to educate your prospect.
And so I want to clarify, I disagree with that strongly.
Now, I believe that we need to demonstrate insight
and we need to show them that we are experts
but that doesn't mean fully educating your prospect.
When the goal is to educate your prospect,
we start to lose focus
on ultimately what we really want to do,
which is to engage them in a conversation.
And at the way we get them in that conversation
is by demonstrating some quick insight upfront
to basically get them to think like
oh, okay, this person knows what they're talking about,
so I'm willing to talk with them and answer
some of their questions, but we don't want to educate.
When we focus on educating
we start to lose focus and it becomes a little bit too much
about us trying to fully show them everything
that they need to know.
That's not what we have to do.
They are not a customer, they are a prospect.
You educate your customers
but you demonstrate insight with your prospects.
Number Three- Pitching your offering.
The idea of pitching your offering literally goes back
to around 1887, when National Cash Register
first started their initial sales training, 1887.
The first training was all about pitching
this cash register, literally a cash register
which so few of us have ever even really seen anymore,
but it was really effective in the late 1800s
early 1900s, even mid 1900s.
But what's happened is that everyone now
is pitching their stuff
and buyers are so wary of the hardcore pitch
or the salesperson who comes in and says,
hey let me show you all the amazing things
that our offering can do,
it is immediately going to drive up
the walls with your prospect.
It is a huge mistake.
The goal is not to pitch your offering
but instead to demonstrate insight and then engage
in that conversation to really understand what's going on
and how your offering might actually
be able to help them, that's it.
If you're starting that conversation by focusing
on your offering, or if your slide deck
is already about your company and your products
or your services, you're in trouble,
you need to throw that out
and start engaging in that conversation.
Number Four- Going for the close.
This is just so crazy to me that there are salespeople
that are still focused on how am I going
to close the prospect?
One of my mentors used to always say
he would say Mark you know what?
If you start strong, you will end strong.
And that is so true.
If you're having an issue actually closing the sale,
chances are like 99.9% likelihood,
there is a problem with something
that you're doing earlier on in the sale
that you're not getting real commitment
and you're not really understanding what's going on
and you're not engaging them in that right conversation,
or you're not demonstrating
that you can solve their problems.
Then when it comes time to try to close the sale,
the prospect says something like
oh, this was great, but I really need to think about it.
Or I need to run this by my partner, or I need to share this
with my team or the timing's just not right,
could you reach back out in six months?
We hear all of those excuses, which are really just lies.
They're just proxies for,
I don't want to do business with you.
I don't find this compelling
and I don't want to move forward.
All of these blue sneaky old school closing techniques
that are focused on getting the person to buy right then
is really just putting all this pressure on the prospect.
And it's only going to further repel them
from ever doing business with us.
Now, I'm not saying that we shouldn't be closing sales,
we absolutely should be closing sales
but it's not about going for the close.
If you have a closing problem, it means
that there is something that is happening earlier on
in the sale where you're not really engaging them
in the right conversations.
You're not using the right sales process to get them
to that point of saying, yes, this makes sense
let's do business.
Number Five- Blaming the marketplace for lost business.
I'm hearing this excuse all the time right now
because there are so many things going on in the world.
We have one of two choices.
We can either continue to blame the marketplace
for any lost sales that are happening
or we can take control
over our financial and selling destiny.
The reason that this is a mistake
is because the salespeople
that are blaming the marketplace right now
are the people who will not be here one year from now.
We must stop blaming all of the external factors
and instead focus on what we can control.
You can control a couple of key things.
You can control how you're prospecting
and the setting appointments.
You can control how you are selling to people
that are in front of you.
And you can control how consistently
you are getting out in front of people.
You can control all of those areas
that are really fully under your control.
What you can control is everything
that's going on in the world.
And so, let's not worry about all that stuff,
and instead, really focus on what we can control.
Take full ownership for your sales,
take full ownership for your lead generation
and have a process, have a system that you can follow
time and time again, to make sure that you can repeatably
and reliably set enough meetings that you need
and at the same time close as many deals as you need
in order to hit your sales goals.
There are salespeople in every single industry
who are crushing it right now.
Don't give yourself that excuse
to blame all the things that are going on in the world.
Instead focus on what you can control.
So there are the five biggest mistakes
to avoid in sales right now.
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