Sales. You’re Not Doing it Right.
Sales can be a personally rewarding and profitable career… when you’re doing it right. But when you’re doing it wrong it can be frustrating, aggravating, demotivating, and demoralizing — to your customers and prospects and co-workers and employer (and you won’t like it much either).
Here is a list of some common things salespeople get wrong along the way to help you spot when you’re not doing it right.
If you’re talking price instead of profit…
You’re not doing it right.
If your prospect doesn’t say “great question – no one has ever asked me that before…”
You’re not doing it right.
If your prospect isn’t helping you create the elements that go into your proposal…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re not the one presenting your idea to the key decision maker or to the board that has the power to sign-off on your project…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re chasing the exact same customers all your competitors are chasing…
You’re not doing it right.
If this proposal looks like every other proposal you’ve done in the last 6 months…
You’re not doing it right.
If you client feels she can get a bid on your exact same service from 14 other vendors…
You’re not doing it right.
If your emails look like everyone else’s emails…
You’re not doing it right.
If your idea of negotiation is simply lowering your price to get the business…
You’re not doing it right.
If you don’t walk in to every single sales call with the expectation you’ll win their business…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re not having fun…
You’re not doing it right.
If your more concerned about building your bank account than building their business…
You’re not doing it right.
If you only call your clients when you need to sell them something…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re worried about what the competition is saying or doing…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re worried about what the competition is charging for their product or service…
You’re not doing it right.
If you haven’t starting planning for next week’s calls this week…
You’re not doing it right.
If you haven’t brought your customer a new customer…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re not writing down your goals…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re not capturing happy clients on video bragging about the great job you did for them…
You’re not doing it right.
If you haven’t given a free talk from the front of a room full of potential prospects…
You’re not doing it right.
If you are whining about your sales ‘quota’ instead of creating a strategy to blow it to shreds inside of 3 months…
You’re not doing it right.
If you have to make cold calls to find new prospects…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re not using LinkedIn.com to build your network and research your clients…
You’re not doing it right.
If you don’t have a Facebook Business/Fan Page…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re not using Twitter to deliver a daily message of value to your audience of potential customers…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re not visiting your client’s and prospect’s websites to gain insight into their business and current areas of focus…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re losing business solely on price…
You’re not doing it right.
If you don’t have 20 great questions ready to ask the prospect (that they’ve never heard before)…
You’re not doing it right.
If you don’t have 10 strong prepared answers to each of your five most common objections…
You’re not doing it right.
If part of your pitch is to insult and denigrate the competition…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re not constantly striving to improve your skills at what you do…
You’re not doing it right.
If your proposals are more like a pitch instead of a performance…
You’re not doing it right.
If you don’t have a personal library built on a foundation of books about positive attitude, why people buy, and personal development…
You’re not doing it right.
If you don’t listen to sets of CDs in your car that help you improve your skills…
You’re not doing it right.
If you don’t have an iPod (or other digital device) filled to capacity with audio and video self-improvement content…
You’re not doing it right.
If you let other people affect your attitude…
You’re not doing it right.
If your voice mail tells people “you’re on your phone or away from your desk”…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’re watching television instead of writing an article that could help your customers improve their business…
You’re not doing it right.
If you’d rather go out drinking instead of writing a book that will make you standout from your competitors…
You’re not doing it right.
If you think you can continue doing business tomorrow the same way you did it yesterday…
You’re not doing it right.
If you think this list will ever be fully complete…
