The 5 Most Common Mistakes Salespeople Make That Cause Them to Lose Sales

Being a salesperson can be a complicated profession, especially since you have to master a combination of hard and soft skills, and fine-tune your techniques to make more sales. The common mistakes salespeople make that cause them to lose sales. Here the top 5 most common mistakes salespeople make:

1) You Allow The Prospect to Lead the Sales Process

It's effortless during the sales process to let the prospect take control and lead the discussion. The best way to maintain control of the sale from the very start is to make sure that you're asking the right questions - quality questions that will provide you with quality answers from the person you are selling to. By asking quality questions, you'll have far better control over the outcome of your sales interaction with your prospect, and the number of sales you make will increase. 

2) You Did Not Do Your Research

It's a cliche, but like many cliches, it holds a truth that "if you fail to prepare, you prepare to fail." In sales, that's very much the case because inadequate preparation and research are among the leading causes of why salespeople lose sales. For example, when first making contact with a prospect, how much research have you done into their business and them personally to better connect with them during the sales process and understand their needs and how your product or service can best fulfill their requirements? 

With research tools like a company's website and LinkedIn.com, you have no excuse for not researching your prospect's professional and personal background and the company they work for before meeting with them.

3) You are Talking Too Much Instead of Listening

Passion and enthusiasm for your product or service are essential qualities to be successful in sales, and never let anyone tell you not to be enthusiastic when selling! It's better to be too excited than to be dull, robotic, or uninterested in what you're selling. You can't expect the prospect to be excited about your product or service if you're not excited. However, sometimes a side effect of that excitement and passion is making the common mistake of talking too much and not listening to the prospect's needs and issues that they want to discuss.

The most effective salespeople listen much more than they talk, letting the prospect talk about their needs, lifestyle, concerns, activities, and how they want the product or service to work for them. In sales, remember the golden rule of you have two ears and one mouth, and therefore you should listen twice as much as you talk. The keys are to be enthusiastic, ask good questions to move the sale forward, and LISTEN twice as much as you talk.

4) You Neglect Your Sales Pipeline

It's very easy to focus only on the hot prospects you are sure will buy now, and you neglect to build your sales pipeline that will bring in future sales. Prospecting often gets overlooked: if you're having a great month selling and completing sales with existing leads, you often forget that you need to keep growing your sales pipeline with new prospects to nurture future sales.

So how do you balance your time between completing sales now and building your pipeline for future sales? The system that many successful salespeople use is they work on prospecting for new leads in the morning, and then they meet with hot prospects and close deals in the afternoon. The reason for this is because you want to get your most challenging work done first thing in the morning so you can get it over with. Your afternoon will be then filled with the much more enjoyable part of selling, which is meeting with hot prospects and closing deals. 

5) You Fail to Ask for the "Closing."

One of the biggest mistakes salespeople make is they don't ask their prospect to buy, known as "closing." Instead, they hope the prospect will magically tell them they are ready to buy. As a salesperson, it is your task to help the prospect make a purchasing decision, which means you need to ask them to buy. It may be hard to get you in the door with the customers, your ability to build a prospect list or fire off product specs, but all the sales process was aimed to produce enough value to create that sense of urgency, so you have to ask appropriately.

Next steps

If you're in business for yourself, check out my course on building a sales system, MBS Program. Remember, sales is a people business. Your success is tied to soft skills. Your ability to truly connect with and understand people and above all, get them to know you, like you and trust you.