Top 10 Selling Mistakes
Achievement of selling "excellence" is most often earned rather
than learned. Outstanding professionals continuously seek to
hone their skills from mistakes made and lessons learned in
pursuit of success. Professional sales people in search of
extraordinary selling competence are no exception. There has
been an ongoing philosophical argument among sales professionals
whether extraordinary sales people are "born or made". Most
think born, because few people can maintain consistent sales
generation performance within the same span of time needed to
achieve financial and motivational stability. Since most sales
people's compensation is based on actual sales orders obtained,
not good intentions or positive attitudes, the selling
profession's relatively high rate of job turnover is most often
validated fraught with intense frustration and an insurmountable
learning curve that crosses many industries, products and
services. Selling "skill" is best achieved via real world
practice not sales training theory, supported by guidance from
others who have taken the same career path previously and are
generous enough to share their learning experiences. This
article attempts to guide you past the "potholes" on the road to
selling success. Like most professions, the most common mistakes
made can be boiled down to a short list of avoidable choices
many of us naturally make in our pursuit to make a living. 10
Selling Mistakes You DON'T Have to Make! 1) Exhibiting Little
Self Confidence: There is no direct place to send you to get
more self confidence. The more you have in selling the better.
Most importantly, the more you exhibit to your existing or
potential customer the better your product or service is
perceived by them, the greater your probability of continued
selling success. 2) "Stretching" the Truth: No one likes getting
lied to, especially someone who is about to spend their hard
earned money based on factual liberties told to them from the
sales representative. Maintain your reputation first and
foremost; it supersedes you in every sales call. Honesty should
be the first adjective you want most of your customers to
describe you with. 3) NOT Saying "I Don't Know", When you Don't
Know: This is a classic selling mistake! Discipline yourself to
admit to your customer that you don't know about something ...
anything! It is most credible to say, "I don't know, but I will
find out for you", than to try to sound like you know what
you're talking about. As you continue to practice this
principle, your knowledge base and your client's perception of
your expertise will continue to increase. 4) NOT "Looking the
Part" Selling involves approaching strangers, people who have
never met you before. People naturally base purchase decisions
on first impressions. Look the part you are playing, or better
yet, exceed the common "image" expectation in your industry.
Always dress and groom one level above your targeted audience.
It portrays success and gives you an opening edge over your
competition. The least you can do is look like you know what you
are doing! 5) Not Knowing Your Competition: Any business owner,
much less a sales person, should know this common mistake! Think
about it, all you have to be is slightly better than your most
effective competitor to get the order. Proactively research your
competitive companies, but more importantly, master your
knowledge of the specific sales representative you actually
compete with - their habits, strengths, weaknesses, pricing
history and selling tendencies. 6) Not "Knowing" Your Product or
Service: Believe it or not, depending most on your product or
service knowledge to get the order is one of the most common
mistakes made in selling. Understanding the common application
benefits and associated features of your offerings is critical,
but constantly regurgitating nebulous product and services
details to a customer will quickly send them to your competitor.
Mastering knowledge of your competitor's offerings is also
critical to selling success. 7) Not "Filling Your Sales
Pipeline": No matter what you sell, there evolves a consistent
selling time cycle that must become an integral part of your
selling process. Knowing how long it typically takes to get a
sales order from initial contact with the target customer equals
your sales pipeline. To maintain a consistent earnings flow you
need to have a constant injection of the correct number of new
sales opportunities going into the front end of your sales
pipeline to get the guaranteed % of orders that will close
coming out. 8) Not Clearly Understanding "Rejection": Selling is
rejection intensive. It is absolutely critical to understand and
learn to appreciate that a larger percent of potential new
customers will reject you and your offering more than accept it.
Selling is a numbers game and unfortunately to be successful at
it you have to learn that customer rejection is not personal and
"no's" can be as valuable as "yes's"! 9) Ineffective Use of Your
"Selling Time": Many average sales people spend most of there
prime selling time every day, "getting ready to get ready" ...
filing, driving, typing or sitting in meetings. Typically from
8AM to 5PM a sales person has only approximately eight hours to
be in front of customers or doing what is necessary to get in
front of customers. Anything that can be done "after business
hours" should be done then and only at that time. 10) Not Having
a "Selling System": Selling is a DIS-qualification process. If
you have not developed a methodical selling process of
disqualifying potential customers, by systematically defining
their problems, their level of commitment and financial
resources to solve the problem, and addressing the purchase
decision process involved, you should stay home! Develop and use
a selling system, refine it continuously, and eventually master
it so you can leverage it over and over without needing to think
about it! Many seasoned sales professionals believe learning
from your own "real time" selling mistakes contributes more to
eventual career success than anything that can be learned from
someone else's experience or teachings. That may or may not be
true, but, if you avoid these 10 common selling mistakes your
path to selling success will be much shorter!
----------------------------------- By: Hamoon Arbabi Source:
http://homebusiness.nexuswebs.net