Sales techniques - are these 3 common sales mistakes holding you back?

With the web becoming the preferred medium for business and social networking, many business owners and salespeople are using email to replace traditional phone calls and referring prospects to web sites instead of dealing with queries directly.

Sales expert, Andy Preston reveals that whilst the technology revolution has enabled many businesses to become more efficient in their day to day activities, it could also be hampering their sales efforts and suggests that a ‘back to basics’ approach is required to ensure potential business opportunities are not lost in the haze of never ending emails and SPAM.

Online and Offline businesses

First and foremost is the need to distinguish between an offline and an online business as this is fundamental to identifying the most appropriate sales tactics.

By definition, an ‘Online’ business has been specifically set up to be run ‘online’ with discussions between the company and the prospect/customer usually via email or with occasional phone calls.

The majority if not all of the sales activity is done online (via marketing methods attracting people to the website) and typically, the prices for "usual" work are visible on the website, and after a discussion a quote is sent via email to the prospect.

An Online business has few or no sales calls looking for meetings, as well as very few pro-active sales calls. Most calls are incoming enquiries to the business, usually by email/web, via networking channels such as Ecademy or occasionally by phone.

In comparison, an ‘Offline’ business is the sort of business where there is someone tasked with the responsibility of bringing in "offline" sales, usually either a salesperson, or the business owner themselves. Their sales activity would involve pro-active sales calls, face-to-face meetings and probably attending networking events.

As technology continues to evolve and become the common means of business communication, the challenge is for the "offline" business is not to merge online and offline methods of selling to prospective customers.

A salesperson or business owner of an offline business frequently confuses their selling style with that of the "online" world and it is often necessary to analyse their activities to highlight exactly which elements of their sales approach are jeopardising their chances of success. The following mistakes are commonly made when selling for an offline business;

SALES MISTAKE No.1: Replacing a follow up call with an email

A hectic workload and multi-tasking in the workplace can cause many professionals to send an email rather than speak to the client directly over the telephone. Whilst the reasoning behind this may valid – “I don’t want to disturb them if they are in the middle of something” – this lack of direct contact could seriously prevent any progression with the client through the sales process.

Considering how many emails the average person is likely to receive in a day, unless it is essential that the client speaks with the salesperson, the likelihood of getting a positive response is remote. More than likely the response will be along the lines of “we’ll be in touch when we want to go ahead” and in reality, nothing has been achieved and the sales process is no further along.

SALES MISTAKE No.2: Sending details and pricing in an email after meeting

During a productive meeting, the client may already be interested and want to know more about the product or company. They may be excited about the product and it is often the ideal opportunity to close the business deal.

But commonly, many opt to send details and pricing to the client in an email after the meeting when the client’s emotion of "wanting to buy" had cooled off. More than likely, the client will open the proposal and focus on the most important thing to them at that time- the price. The probable response will be "it's not something we want to proceed with at the moment" or "I'll have to speak to xyz and come back to you" or "the price was too high so we're not going ahead".

In a face to face meeting a salesperson has the biggest opportunity to use the client’s 'emotion to buy', at the moment when the client was most excited about what the salesperson had to offer. This is often the best opportunity to close - when the salesperson could have overcome a "price" objection and re-closed for the deal.

SALES MISTAKE No.3: Agree to send further details by email

It may seem a logical progression in a conversation with a client but how often can the salesperson be sure what exactly the client was interested in and that it wasn’t just a ‘fob-off’ designed to end the conversation as quickly as possible?

Any time a sales opportunity presents itself the salesperson must make the most of it and relying on email to do the job of selling is often a sure-fast way to lose business. The best way to persuade and use sales skills is face-to-face and the second best way is by phone. Resorting to 'selling by email' should be a very last resort.

Having tackled through the maze of offline and online selling styles, the challenge is now to present a structured, confident and client-friendly approach to closing the deal and Andy recommends the following three golden rules:

3 Golden rules of selling
 

• Always call for follow-ups, there's hardly ever an excuse for email follow-up unless the salesperson has tried numerous times and they want to let the client know they’ve been trying to get hold of them
• Close for the business when the salesperson is in front of the client - especially as it gives them the chance to handle their objections.
• Salespeople must be aware of not falling for a 'fob-off' and open the conversation back up to discussing the offering and how it will help them.