By Kelly Riggs | Sales + Leadership
There are certain things that average salespeople do over and over that can kill a sale. I know because I’ve done most of them. For some, I’ve been guilty many times. [I’m not hopeless, but I am slow.] Turns out, however, it’s not just me; most every salesperson makes these same mistakes. Which is sad because every single one of the seven things listed below can be fixed immediately.
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By Kelly Riggs | Sales + Leadership
The biggest mistake salespeople make is in failing to think about and prepare for the sales call. Since every sales call is different — the introductory call, the discovery call(s), the presentation call, follow-up calls, negotiation calls, and so forth — it stands to reason that a salesperson should be uniquely prepared for that call.
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By Kelly Riggs | Sales + Leadership
The odds are really good that many of your salespeople are ineffective in presenting a product or service solution to your customers. But you probably have no idea just how bad. They keep telling you it’s the customer, or the marketplace, or your prices are too high, or the leads suck or some such nonsense, and the reality is they simply aren’t very good.
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By Kelly Riggs | Sales + Leadership
A strange, but true, fact in selling is that customers will often tolerate less-than-ideal performance from an entrenched competitor simply because of the hassles associated with changing suppliers. Make no mistake, most people do not like change. In fact, until a prospect is convinced that the benefits of making a change outweighs the problems associated with it, a sale will almost never happen. The critical aspect of convincing a prospect to change hinges upon your ability to build credibility. Without credibility, trust will not follow, and a prospect will not even remotely consider a change until and unless they trust you.
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