Suggestions For Changing Habits Of An Ineffective Sales Employee
I really enjoyed Don Perkins recent blog post called: "The 12 Habits of Highly Ineffective Sales People" and I thought it was well worth discussing in my post today.
For me the first habit rang especially true - he stated that all too often Sales professionals are geared to say things like, “I’m Following Up” “I’m Checking In” and “I’m Touching Base”. He suggests a person should evolve and become more creative when it comes to these situations. So for example, it may hit home with your prospect if you customize your comment to reflect your surprising sense of knowledge of THEIR business. Try saying something like, “Did you see the Bloomberg report about your customer X who just won a $2M bid with XYZ Company? How does that impact your operation?”
Whatever alternative scenario you can dig up will help differentiate yourself from the “rest” and help stop your prospects from acting like they’re too busy for you to be heard. In reality you don’t really just want to touch base, that’s what you do with your second tier group of friends on Facebook. Instead he gives the advice to “round that base with meaningful conversation in order to show you are in the top tier of business and working for a living just like them.” Makes perfect sense to me!
I think sales people have a propensity to hand over control of the conversation too easily to prospects. The bad habits that Don mentions clearly point out why this tends to happen and a lot of times it’s because of the little things people forget about. Things like their tone, the words they choose to use and even an utter sense of desperation to please.
Give his post a read when you get a chance and see if you align with any of the points he raises. If you find yourself practicing some of these bad habits then make it a point to adjust them. As I have said in my last post, you have more power than you realize to make a change, both big and small. A few tweaks here and there and you’ll be back in the driver’s seat and taking full control of the conversations you’re having. Remember it’s not just your prospects time, it’s YOURS too, so be smart and make use of it wisely.