It doesn’t matter what exactly you sell, some industrial products, package tours, or luxury goods. In any case, you will have some competitors, and you must show your customers, be it in UAE or in some other country, that you are better, your offers are exciting and useful, and managers make almost no mistakes (there are no ideal companies that never make mistakes, of course), in any case, typical selling mistakes. Our article is about typical mistakes made by sales representatives and how to avoid them.
Typical sales mistakes and how to avoid them
- Poor knowledge of the goods or services. A sales manager should know well all the characteristics of a product and, besides, all the benefits that a buyer can get when buying it. The TV is large, black, and inexpensive – this is not enough for a modern buyer. A person wants to figure out what are the advantages of this product in comparison with alternatives, and what are the advantages of your company (if there are some, of course). People also want to know about unobvious benefits. For example, this TV is assembled in China and may not work as long as the one assembled in Japan. But this TV has a set of advanced functions with the possibility of various connections with extra connectors and so on. It is worth considering the non-obvious advantages your products have – this is your trump card in the fight for a customer. The knowledge of the product helps to sell a lot. The more you know, the more arguments you have in your favor.
- Inability to listen to questions and work with objections. Many sales managers are not ready for customer questions, and even less for ready for possible objections. It seems to us that all people are different, but, if you listen to what questions they ask, you will understand that every day, different customers ask very similar questions. You should write them down and think through competent answers to these in advance. Compose a response plan, read it regularly, review it to be ready for any question from your client. You can brainstorm them with your colleagues and think over the answers to various problems and objections, choose the most suitable and most “selling” ones and use them, and then distribute them among all sales managers of your company.
- Wrong wording. Trying to convey to a client the idea of the need for a purchase, sellers often create an incorrect impression of a product. This happens due to poorly selected words. The product can be excellent, and the client needs it, but wrong words and phrases that a sales manager uses in presentation can cause a negative product picture for a buyer. Wrong word selection for product descriptions is a widespread sales error. Courses and training for sales managers will be useful here. In these classes, you will learn examples of the correct wording that will work as they must.
- The intention to sell a product or service at any price. Another common mistake made by a sales manager is to sell a product at any cost. Now, a client wants to try on other shoes, a dress of a different style, or even changes her mind about purchasing shoes and became interested in bags. And a seller continues to intrusively offer the shoes she tried first. The client feels that the seller needs only her money, and it does not matter that the dress is a little tight, and the client would prefer shoes with a lower heel. Better try to find out why the customer decided to skip the purchase. Is it too expensive? Ok, let's see a more budget option. In the process of each sale, in addition to concluding a transaction, there are other options available. For example: “Let me call you back when the model you want appears on sale.” or "Come to us on the weekend, we will have the delivery of the autumn collection of outerwear." There is always an option to continue negotiations and make a sale.
- Passive behavior. In the "seller-buyer" relationship, someone always plays an important role, and someone obeys. For successful sales, the leader in this tandem should be the one who sells the product. This does not mean that a buyer should be suppressed, although this tactic is a common mistake in sales. On the contrary, a client should have the impression that the decision to purchase was made independently without any influence from the outside, but the seller must control the whole situation.
And the main mistake is the reluctance to get new skills and knowledge and develop professionally. No one is born with the ability to sell masterfully. Like any other skill, this one also requires the wish to acquire it, via constant training and work on own mistakes. In the work of real professionals in selling there is no place to errors, as a result, the customer should have the impression that the purchase is his/her own decision. A high level of ownership of sales skills allows a manager to convince a client of the need to make a purchase utterly unnoticed by the latter. Can you master this skill, and avoid endless sales mistakes? Of course, it is not only possible but necessary for a sales manager. See one of our sales courses for possible solutions for your skils upgrade.