Sales wisdom comes from many different sources. Today’s post, which discusses what not to do when selling draws from an article by motivational author Pauline Estrem and is channeled through the AdminBooks newsletter published by my esteemed colleague Renee Daggett.
Ms. Estrem lists what she refers to as “the Negative 9”—behaviors that are guaranteed to lose you the sale or keep you from starting a productive sales conversation. Here they are, in her words:
Failing to Adequately Prepare
- Not Following Through on Your Word
- Trash Talking
- Being Fake
- Misidentifying the Prospect’s Stage in Decision-Making
- Forcing the Close
- Neglecting the Long-Term Client
- Avoiding Accountability
- Not Self-Analyzing
I think these behaviors are all pretty self-explanatory, but two deserve a bit of extra mention. Misidentifying the prospect’s stage in decision-making is a biggie. According to Ms. Estrem, “Every prospect is in one of two decision stages: deciding WHETHER TO CHANGE and then deciding WITH WHOM TO MAKE THAT CHANGE.” Asking your prospect where he is can help you both decide how to proceed.
The negative second behavior is forcing the close. When I was in sales training with Dictaphone, the mantra was “close early and often.” What many of us fledgling salespeople probably didn’t hear was that we needed, as Ms. Estrem reminds us, to have earned the right to do that.
Your thoughts on any of these self-sabotaging sales behaviors?
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