Monthly Archives: February 2010

Selling is not that complicated as it seems to be. Professionals engaged in selling continuously work to sharpen their skills and try to learn from mistakes made in the past. An ongoing argument among the sales professionals’ states that outstanding sales professionals are born not made as only few people can maintain consistency in their performance and achieve financial stability.

Extraordinary selling skills can only be achieved by real world practice and the guidance of those who have gained enough experience in this field. Here is our small attempt to make you understand the most common selling mistakes, which are better to avoid for taking the road to selling success.

 Exhibiting Little Self-Reliance : - No place in the world can get you self confidence, since it is something that resides in you only. The more confidence you exhibit to your customer the better your sales will be that in turn will increase your probability of success in selling.

 “Extending” the Truth : - Be honest to your customers as nobody likes to be cheated, especially when they are about to spend their hard earned money on the basis of the facts you told them. Maintain your reputation because it supersedes you with every sales call you make.

 Not Admitting That You Don’t Know : - This is the classic selling mistake made by most of the sales representatives. Admit to your customer that you don’t know about something they are asking. It’s better to say ‘I don’t know, but I will find out for you’ than giving them unaccountable information. This practice will not only increase you knowledge base but also enhance client’s perception about your expertise.

 Not Looking One among Them : - Most of the purchase decisions are made on the first impression of the sales representative. Always remember that selling involves interaction to strangers, so try to groom your self one level above your targeted audience. This in turn will provide you an edge over your competitors and lead you to the path of success.

 Lack of Knowledge about Your Competitor : - Always try to be better than your competitors to attract more customers and proactively research about your competitive companies. Moreover, gather all the information about your specific competitors from their habits to weaknesses, selling tendencies, pricing record everything for tough market competition.

 Insufficient information on your offerings :- Complete dependence on the knowledge of product or service you are selling is also a common mistake. Brief knowledge about the applications, benefits and some features of your offerings is necessary, but providing unnecessary or unorganized details about the products and services will instantly move customer to your competitor.

 Not Filling Sales Pipeline : - Consistent selling time cycle is an integral part of every selling process. Significant knowledge about how long it takes to receive order from preliminary contact along with target customer equals your sales pipeline. The actual figure of your sales opportunities reaching the front end of your sales pipeline with guaranteed percentage of orders coming out will help you in maintaining consistent flow of earnings.

 Not Accepting Rejection :- It is difficult to learn that a large number of potential new customers will turn down your offer more times than accepting it. Rejection is something very common is selling business. Selling is all about numbers and it is required to understand that the rejection made by the customer is not personal.

 Wasting your Selling Time :- Effective utilization of selling time will yield more fruitful results, rather than spending your time in other unimportant things. A sales representative gets only 8 hours to interact with the customers and convince them to purchase what they are selling. Therefore, it’s better to utilize that time in generating new customers and avoid doing things than can be done after office.

 Lack of Selling System :- Developing a systematic selling process for disqualifying customers is necessary so that their problems can be defined systematically, solving their problem as per their level of assurance and financial resources and tackling the purchase decision process efficiently. Continuous refining and use of selling system will eventually make you a master of selling process.

Although, it is believed that selling can be learned by real time mistakes only, but the common mistakes made by the professionals can also be learned. By avoiding the above mentioned common selling mistakes, one can easily walk the path of success and reach their goal in a shorter time span.