What are some common sales mistakes and how can you learn from them?
- Missing sales goals
- Losing the sale
- Not understanding the customers
You will always experience your fair share of failures; this is inevitable. Even with the vast array of sales enablement tools available on the Internet, there will always be that one deal that slips away because of a mistake or a client decision. Don’t let these things discourage you.
As sales professionals, we enter selling opportunities with high hopes and clear expectations of a quick closure. When a potential buyer turns us down, closes the door, and walks away, it can be very dissatisfying, to say the least. As difficult as failure feels, it provides a great opportunity for improvements. When used to their full extent, what you learn from your mistakes can greatly help you with all the future openings after that.
Treat your failures as additional stepping stones to your eventual success. With that being said, here’s how you can contemplate on the next steps you have to do after experiencing these typical sales fails!
Missing Sales Goals
Every effort you put into action is implemented for you to reach your sales target; not being able to meet them means that something went wrong. Maybe you’ve miscalculated certain things, or you’ve overestimated your efforts, but the main challenge is to identify which of the many factors involved in the sales process led to you ultimately failing to achieve your sales goals.
The best thing for you to do is to evaluate your activities, strategies, and efforts. Study them and compare the projected results with the actual outcome. Review your efforts and see if there were any problems with your focus and theme. Sometimes, certain strategies end up narrowing the scope too much that you forget the bigger picture.
Another thing to look at is your projection of ideas. A common mistake that amateur sales and marketing professionals do is that they trust their ideas of what the clients want instead of listening to what they are actually telling you. Remember, your clients typically already have a general idea of their problem. Your job is to analyze their situation and bring forth a solution that is tailored to them. This will need clear and consistent communication between you and your clients and not just a mere survey of their problems.
The sales process is long and systematic. Any problem in there can set up a barrier that complicates the rest of it. Keep an open mind and eye to make sure that you get to identify the problematic parts of the sales process.
Losing the Sale
There are times when your prospects would simply end up closing the door on you instead of going ahead with the deal. It can happen to anybody. And sometimes, you’ll be left without knowing anything about why that happened. It may have been because the company was unclear of its needs or their staff failed to understand the benefits of your product or services. Another possible reason for you losing the sale would be because you pushed too hard on points that weren’t relevant to your clients.
Either way, instead of guessing what went wrong, try reflecting on your actions during your interactions with them. If your prospects weren’t clear with their own needs, then it probably wasn’t something that you could have helped them with anyway. However, if you found a mistake with your methods such as not paying enough attention, overpromising, or being vague, then make sure that you do better with the next prospect. One closed opportunity doesn’t mean all opportunities are gone for good.
Not Understanding the Customer
No matter how great your solutions or how effective your B2B sales tools may be, if you don’t understand the problems that your customers have, then you’re more or less risking them walking away. Even when you have an ultimate solution for countless problems, when it’s not the thing that your clients are looking for, then you shouldn’t force it onto them.
It’s your job to clearly identify exactly what problems your current client is having. Tailoring your pitch to the product’s reality is critical. Keep in mind: overpromising and under delivering is enough to tarnish your reputation, so make sure you go into a transaction with a realistic mindset.
Without an understanding of your customer, it will be hard to offer them solutions that are specially made for them. General products might provide a band-aid solution, but without a true understanding of the client’s issues, nothing can be set in stone.
Always remember to focus on the customer. Identify their problems, come up with solutions while discussing it with them. This way, you will quickly know what their pain points are and what you can do in order to satisfy their wants and needs!
Key Takeaway
Everybody makes mistakes. Even those who make use of the most advanced sales enablement tools and B2B sales tools are prone to some failures now and then. You just have to keep in mind that failures are only temporary. Bouncing back from them is what’s important!
Just as every successful sale represents a lesson in doing things right, a failed sale presents a lesson in how not to do things. Learn from every sales opportunity and maximize your ability while you grow your sales career!