Five Scary Sales Facts on Halloween

Given it’s Halloween and the scariest day of the year, I thought I’d share five chilling sales mistakes you should avoid.

Being reactive – Many businesses and sales people spend the majority of their time reactively responding to any sales enquiry that finds its way into the business. This means lots of time wasted pursuing any clients rather than ideal clients. Proactively pursuing your ideal client avatar will significantly increase the chances of your business achieving its growth and profit targets.

Poor preparation – Poorly preparing for key meetings is still a big issue in the world of high-end corporate sales. From asking about information that is already in the public domain, such as “How many employees do you have?” to not actually understanding the customers high level operating model, poor preparation still remains one of the scariest sales mistakes.

Issuing proposals too early – Many salespeople issue proposals as soon as they are asked to, even if they don’t have a deep understanding of the customer’s needs. You will win much more business by issuing proposals when you’re ready and have a better, deeper understanding of the client needs.

Neglecting the implementation – All too often transactions are won then lost. There is often a poor handover and linkage between sales and implementation or account management. This usually leads to a poor client experience and outcome. Always make an effort to step up, be involved in the implementation and ensure you over deliver on what was originally sold to the client.

Poor account management – Business that has been won has to be nurtured and looked after. Relationships have to be developed over the long term. But often businesses have ‘leaky bucket syndrome’ where business is won and then lost over time, slowly dripping away due to neglect and poor account management practices. Make a conscious effort to implement strategies to make your customers partners for the long term and stop losing business you worked hard to win.

If you can eliminate these five scary sales mistakes in your sales efforts you will be on the right track to TRANSFORM your sales.

Mark Swain is a business advisor, fintech investor and author of Banking 2020 and No $ales No Sleep. www.banking2020book.com and www.nosalesnosleep.com

#Halloween #sales #management #salesprocess