The purpose of a salesperson is to act as a potential client or customer’s first encounter with your company. It’s up to you to deliver the best first impression and capitalize on leads. However, plenty of salespeople can mess up a sale with a simple misstep.
For example, you may push your product too hard on someone who was already sold and turn off their interest as a result. It’s also possible that you come across as nervous and untrained, even if you aren’t.
Here are five common errors for salespeople to avoid.
1. Not Setting Sales Goals
The first mistake amateur salespeople make is not setting sales goals for themselves. You can’t just show up to work and expect to put in amazing work.
Setting goals is important for encouraging yourself to work harder. It also gives you a benchmark if you want to work on your sales quota.
2. Lack of Confidence in the Product
Different types of sales jobs require different types of confidence.
If what you’re selling is a service, you need to show that you know what you’re talking about and that you’re someone the customer can trust. Selling a physical product means convincing the other person that it’s worth their purchase.
Your lead will know if you lack confidence in the product, so it helps to work for a company you believe in.
3. Make It About Yourself
Becoming a salesperson means having confidence, but that doesn’t mean your sales pitch should be all about you. It should be all about the other person and what they need.
You can do this by talking about the types of customers you have and what problems they need to deal with. How does your specific product or service help them? What’s unique about your brand?
4. Failed Follow-Up
Most prospects in sales aren’t turned into clients as soon as your first call is over. Many leads require multiple follow-up calls to hash out the details. There may also be leads that are shopping around for a service they’ll need a few months down the line.
Always make sure to follow up with them, especially if they’ve shown interest in the past.
5. Not Pursuing Training
Beginner salespeople should pursue training to learn different sales strategies and improve their skills. This is especially important if this is your first sales job.
More experienced salespeople may even benefit from refresher training. There may be new techniques or software to learn. It’s also possible that the ethics of sales has changed.
Check out this page on sales training for more information.
Avoid These Common Errors for Salespeople
There are a lot of errors for salespeople to avoid, but you’ll only become aware of them through practice and persistence. You will screw up, but that’s okay. What matters is that you grow in your role and go out of your way to improve, whether by taking lessons or listening to feedback from your peers.
Check out some of our other articles to read about digital marketing, tech, and more.
