Attention Salespeople: Have You Made These Mistakes?
During the course of a month, I get plenty of sales calls. Frankly, I wish I had $1.00 for each one I receive. I think I could have retired five times already! I do meet with a number of salespeople during the course of the week and I still am amazed at some of the basic mistakes that salespeople make. Here are a quick five (in no particular order) that come to mind:
- They don’t listen. If they are there to stress a certain product, they do it even though we might have no need for it or are doing it internally. No matter what happens they are very robotic and can’t deviate no matter what happens.
- They don’t have an agenda! For me this really is a problem. I like to know what we are going to cover and how long it will take. The buttoned up salespeople will not only have an agenda but will ask for input.
- They have given no thought to how they can help our business! Some of the salespeople are really good at getting a meeting but once they are in front of you they tend to go page by page in a presentation and can’t draw a compelling reason as to why we should be doing business with them. The goal of a salesperson is to BUILD A BRIDGE FROM THEIR PRODUCT OR SERVICE TO OUR COMPANY! For me it’s as simple as that.
- Next steps? To me if you have a meeting, you should always have an idea of what the next steps are and absolutely confirm them with your client/prospect. I find very few people who do this consistently
- And my number one favorite is no follow up. A few years ago I was at a joint MRA/AMA meeting and I was introduced to someone who asked me to volunteer some time for a program she was involved with. I was very excited about the program and helping her out. It involved children and I enjoy giving something back to the community. Guess what? She never called, never followed up and I never saw her again. All successful salespeople follow up and if they don’t it speaks volumes about who they are and the service you would get if you ever did business with them.
Have you ever had any of the ones I mentioned happen to you?
What are some of your favorite mistakes done by salespeople?
I look forward to reading your comments.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:00 am
Hi Merrill - this topic is near and dear to me, for various reasons. One of my favorite phrases is, “If you’re telling, you’re just selling.” What does this mean? As Jeffrey Gitomer says, “people don’t like be sold, but they love to buy.” In other words, find out what I need before you sell me a solution to solve my problems. I think the one area that mediocre sales people struggle with is they spend too much time talking and not enough listening. I work with my team a lot on the concept of Power Questions. Are they asking questions to uncover the client’s pain or needs? If not, how can you offer a solution? If you aren’t providing answers tailored to your client, you’re doing them and yourself a disservice.
Asking the questions is great, but are you really listening to their answer? I learned one of my best lessons on a sales call back in 2003, while I was working for you at another firm. We were in front of a client, and she was in the middle of telling us something that we wanted to uncover, but didn’t expect her to tell us. Before she could finish her answer, I started talking about something else. I remember you asking me at the end, what she revealed. I didn’t have an answer; because I was too busy talking when I should have been listening. In reality, we were on the verge of getting an answer which could have helped uncover some valuable information. I didn’t even notice. That was a real example of not listening. Was my point more valuable than the client? I’d say, definitely not. Shut up and listen is a mantra I try and follow to this day. If you ask a question, let the client answer and really pay attention. You never know what you’ll uncover.
April 14th, 2008 at 10:00 am
I have 2 real pet peeves in this arena - these apply to the moment I pick up the call and cause me to stop them dead in their tracks:
1. Use a phone line/connection that works!! Technology is fantastic and I personally love it, but please don’t call me on a VOIP line. Even worse if it’s from a location offshore. The first thing I want to know is that I can communicate with a person clearly and easily. This does not scream ‘great client service’ to me.
2. Please, I implore you, do NOT use your call center to prospect for clients. This is the epitome of everything Merrill states above. These poor interviewers can only follow the script, can never answer any question that even scratches the surface, and most often sound like automatons. Does anyone ever really get any business this way? A sales person should be an expert in marketing research, or be able to loop the correct individual in at a moment’s notice if he/she can’t answer your question.
I guess the other broad-based issue is that I get called repeatedly by other telephone data collection vendors. No matter how many times I tell them we do not outsource, they call me again and again. And, as Merrill aptly points out, they continue to talk through their pitch no matter what I tell them - “but we can save you money by handling your overflow, then you can take im more business,” etc. Apparently, you didn’t hear me the first time… Our clients are paying for our quality and expertise, not for us to farm it out to the lowest bidder.
Thanks for the great points, Merrill!
April 14th, 2008 at 10:58 am
The biggest mistake I used to get, was salespeople not doing their homework. When I worked at JCPenney which at the time had 1200 stores, I was amazed at the number of people who had called on me who had not been to a Penney Store recently. Same with RadioShack. Over 7000 stores, one within 5 minutes of 90% of the US population, but the salespeople had not been into a store and didn’t know what we were about. The names of both companies were also frequently misspelled on proposals.
The next big mistake was the boilerplate proposal. At RS I once got a proposal that said:’ This research project will help RadioShack understand who is eating in its restaurants.” I also got a proposal once that had been re-written from a project for another client. It was a Word document. Whoever prepared it send it off before using the “track changes” command. Therefore, I got to see who the original client was, what their specs were and what their cost was. Since getting that, I routinely use the track changes command when I get a proposal in Word.
April 14th, 2008 at 11:40 am
So few researchers have sales training and this is where it shows. Every point you made, Merrill, is core to a good sales training program. We were learning the hard way, until the light bulb went off and we contracted for sales training for all of our consultants. Quite a difference!
April 14th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Hi Merrill,
Being a Sales person, I can’t agree with you more! When I first started in this business, I admittedly was naive enough to think that everyone needed our services and in short order and with a great deal of guidance, not all from Mr. Jeffrey Gitomer, though I value some of his energy and his experience but not his tactics, I learned to listen better and learn more about my clients needs and the industry as a whole. To ask the appropriate questions and look for their/your guidance in what the need areas are and how I can serve making your lives easier! Distinct from how I can sell you my product!
We created an entire campaign around “our word, your peace of mind” trying to convey that when you hand off a project to us, you can rest assured we will treat it with dignity and honor that we need not bug you any more than needed.
I’ve also learned that follow-up is to be brief and to the point, as all of our/your times are valuable.
Thank you, as always,
Fee
April 14th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Great comments so far. Sounds like salespeople have a long way to go to be at the top of their game. With the current economy being challenging I wonder if companies are doing more internal training programs or bringing in outside help to train their staff?
Keep the comments coming.
Merrill
April 15th, 2008 at 9:10 am
I had the privilege of building our office in NYC - and now, I love getting sales calls (can you hear the sarcasm?).
I frequently get calls from credit card processing companies telling me that they’ve taken a great interest in our business, asking if we’re accepting credit cards and if not, how they can help us. When I ask them what my business is (since they’ve taken such a great interest I expect they’d know), they clumsily read me the name of my company (as if I didn’t know it myself). I must admit I have a good time on the phone with bad cold callers. They usually get frustrated with me and then hang up.
I also get door-knocked at least once a week - office supplies, copiers, real estate brokers, coffee/water, etc. When they show up I pretend that I don’t know anything and that our headquarters in Dallas takes care of everything (whether true or not). I took care of all vendors before moving in and used personal referrals to fill all products that I didn’t have a personal relationship with. That’s how I buy - from friends and from friends of friends.
The key for successful salespeople is networking - spending the time that’s not 9-5 in really finding not only clients, but a network of other salespeople to help you sell.