Are You Committing Any of the 7 Deadly Sales Sins?
It would be great for your business if every salesperson on your team always used the best possible strategies and took the right approach to close each deal. Unfortunately, that’s not the case – your salespeople are human, and it’s in their nature to make mistakes. If these sales mistakes occur on a regular basis (and if you’re feeling a bit dramatic), you might call them sins. For The Seven Deadly Sales Sins, we’ve interviewed seven top sales leaders to find out where their salespeople have gone wrong in the past and how they’ve set them back on the right path.
Many sales-based errors in judgment fall into the category of “false positives.” When salespeople fall into false positive traps, it’s usually because they thought the deal they were working on was as good as done. But in truth, they were blind. Why?
According to Joe Lemay, ClearSlide’s VP of Sales, your team must have the ability to see the truth of your business’s interaction with a prospect. “Without an understanding of customer engagement related to your content – whether it’s presentations, collateral, proposals, contracts, etc. – you’re running blind and left to speculate.” It’s good to be confident in your instincts as a salesperson – instincts are important! They’re an important part of human nature. But when it comes to closing deals, it’s better to base your decisions on proven, valuable data than hit-or-miss instincts.
Emmanuelle Skala, the VP of Sales for Influitive, has seen similar visibility issues crop up in her experience: “We might get a verbal agreement when we are speaking to someone who appears to be a decision-maker, but there are really other ‘hidden’ influencers or decision-makers preventing the deal…there is more internal selling to do, but the rep thinks that the only thing left is paperwork.” As a sales leader, you have to make sure that your team consistently engages with enthusiastic customer contacts and reaches to find more internal champions – your pipeline will benefit.
Download The 7 Deadly Sales Sins to learn more about key pitfalls to avoid and how you can help your salespeople surmount these obstacles.
