Peady’s Selling Engagement sponsored by IRD Prospector

The longer you’ve been in sales, the better you should become and unfortunately the longer you’ve been in sales, the more ingrained your bad habits become too.

Experienced people forget

It’s my experience that the more experienced and senior sales people have a tough time identifying the tactics that no longer work for them or their clients because they abandon the daily review and regular tweaking of their selling process. After all, they know how to do it!

The “newbie” mistakes

They occur every selling day and need to be avoided no matter your level of experience:

1. Selling your product or service on price only or not including a value proposition. Customers have a clear perception that they get what they pay for – by focusing on price, you devalue your product and invite price comparison. 

2. Selling or pitching your product way too early. Before needs or pain-points are uncovered it’s all about “me and my station” (we’re number one, you know). 

3. Not asking great business focussed, not advertising focussed questions. Most business people don’t want to talk about advertising, it’s an expense. But they do want to talk about driving more enquiries to their business. Uncover the needs. 

4. Failing to effectively follow up and monitor the activity after the sale. Too many sales people are off in search of the next big conquest instead of nurturing their current client pool. You can more easily sell to a current customer, than one you don’t know. 

5. Forgetting to ALWAYS ask a closing question. Not just to make a sale but to close an appointment, seek strong information while qualifying, arrange the next step and seek a referral. It’s not a corny phrase “always be closing”.

How about 2016?

As the selling year is fast coming to a close why not have a quick look at the list. Is it time for you to re-evaluate before you kick off 2016?

About the author 

Stephen Pead is a media industry veteran of 30 years with significant experience in direct sales, sales management and general management. He is based in Sydney and specialises in helping SME’s market their businesses more effectively and providing training for salespeople and sales managers.
He can be contacted at [email protected]