At one time I thought selling was hard work but simple. I don’t anymore. Selling is hard work and complex. There is no one right way to win a sale, which got me thinking about the many ways a sale can be lost.
Why look at how to lose a sale?
By knowing what kills a sale you can try to avoid it, which puts you that much closer to winning. So, avoid these 31 and you’ll sell more.
Sales reps lose a sale when they:
- Fail to pre-qualify a customer’s fit with the potential solution
- Sell to a customer who doesn’t know they have a need or want
- Fail to discover the customer’s needs or wants
- Fail to establish personal credibility and integrity to gain access to customers and discover their needs and wants
- Sell to a customer who lacks the authority to buy
- Present the solution before the customer is ready to buy
- Are ignorant about the customer’s industry; trends, challenges and vocabulary
- Are ignorant about the customer’s business; strategies, goals, culture & internal dynamics
- Are ignorant about the customer’s (decision makers) personal agendas: ambitions, alliances, political capital, vulnerabilities & past history
- Are ignorant about the business concepts and management strategies the customer uses
- Don’t care to learn #7 – 10 above about their customers
- Fail to stay in contact over time and miss out when a customer buys
- Listen poorly and fail to hear the subtext a customer is really saying
- Don’t respect and care for customers as being like you: working a job, earning a living
- Don’t tailor the offer into a solution that satisfies customers needs or wants
- Fail to connect value to price: seen as high priced
- Offer a solution that has more than customers want or need: seen as high priced & over scoped
- Under-present the efficiencies driving price: seen as too low a price
- Don’t connect personally with customers
- Fail to elicit customers’ buying emotions
- Fail to provide facts customers can use to justify their emotional buying decisions
- Don’t take into account customers’ alternatives, i.e. competitive offers and/or status quo of “no-decisions”
- Fail to persuade customers to buy their solution and instead inform customers with a data dump
- Present only information about the seller’s company
- Speak only about features, benefits, or both
- Lack knowledge of how their solution delivers value to customers
- Lack ability to quantify their results in customer valued terms
- Fail to present a compelling business case and the personal reasons for customers to buy them
- Fail to follow formal bidding instructions
- Make stock, un-thought out “take it or leave it” statements in proposals or presentations
- Lack the ability to communicate in the customer’s desired style
What’s Missing?
There are many more ways to lose a sale. What are yours? I mean, how have you seen others lose a sale?
