In this article, leading Sales Expert Andy Preston explains why most salespeople and business owners struggle to convert their sales opportunities….. and often end up ‘warming’ up business for their competition…….……
So many salespeople and businesses fail to convert their sales opportunities properly. In my Sales Training sessions, we talk about this a lot!
Some are so bad at it, they may as well have the title ‘Business Development Manager – For The Competition’ as their job title!
Here are 6 sales mistakes that a lot of people make…..
Non-Sales staff involved with the sales process (e.g. estimators, admin staff, operational staff, office managers etc) don’t think like salespeople.
They think ‘how can I do my job efficiently and give the customer all the information they require’. Not ‘how do I turn this sales opportunity into an order?’
Without proper training and a ‘sales mindset’ for all staff involved with the sales process, I can guarantee you that you’re losing business you should be winning.
I’m often very surprised just how poor most people are at qualifying their sales opportunities. Sales Qualification should happen on EVERY sales opportunity, and the bigger the deal, the more important it is!
Yet most companies (especially on incoming leads or sales pipeline) don’t ask the right questions and qualify the opportunities properly. They just give out information, be ‘nice’ to prospects, and ‘hope’ to win the deal.
Pathetic. That’s costing you money too.
I can never get my head around this. Why don’t companies make sales a priority? Sales should ALWAYS be a priority!
If you’re not closing sales you don’t have a business. Regardless of how good your product is. Regardless of how good your customer service is. Regardless of how nice your staff are.
Sales is THE most important thing to a business. If you don’t get the prospect to buy from you, they’ll likely buy from your competitor.
That’s costing you money! Why would you throw it away like that?
This is one of my personal favourites! Far too many salespeople email instead of call!
I know. It’s hard to get through to that prospect.
I know. It’s more ‘time efficient’ to send an email.
I know. There’s less rejection if you send an email.
But sending emails instead of calling will cost you business.
One of my favourite sayings is ‘Emails Inform, Salespeople Persuade’.
If you’re just informing people of something (like confirming a verbally agreed meeting time and venue, or sending an agenda etc), then email is fine.
If you need to PERSUADE someone to do something, then voice or face-to-face is infinitely better!
Failure to do this is also costing you money. Got it?
One of the most important factors in influencing a prospect to your point of view, and even converting the business (if they are making a fast decision) is your speed of response to their enquiry.
If you’ve been to a sales training session or seminar of mine, or seen me online, you’ll have heard me mention this before. Probably several times. But are you doing it?!! And are you doing it every time!
Being first-to-respond gives you the advantage. Do you want the advantage? Or are you giving it to your competitors?
When was the last time you properly trained the people dealing with your sales opportunities?
And I don’t mean watching how someone else does it, or ‘learning on the job’. I mean getting some expertise from outside the business, who has specific expertise in this area, to help you and the team formulate a specific process for winning more sales opportunities?
Done properly this is the best investment you can make, and will provide pretty much immediate payback and ROI, and produce improved sales results for months and years to come.
Why wouldn’t you want to do that?
If you are interested in me working with you or your team to overcome some of their problems with sales pipeline,managing their sales opportunities, cold calling and prospecting, or converting incoming leads then contact me here, or call +44 161 401 0142 to see how I can help you!
Follow the tips above and watch your sales soar! I look forward to hearing how you get on…..
(This article is copyright Andy Preston 2004-2019. To copy or syndicate this or any part of this article contact Andy Preston for guidelines).