Five Reasons Salespeople Fail

Across nearly every major industry, we have found a pattern of behaviors and beliefs that almost always leads to sales failures. We offer you the top five:

1. Most salespeople do not follow a sales process or methodology. When they successfully close a sale, they do not know what they did correctly, so they cannot repeat the success. When do not succeed in closing the sale, they cannot learn from their failures because they cannot debrief the sales call. They sell from the "seat of their pants" or "wing it" and believe that sales is just a numbers game. They have to throw a lot of you know what against the wall to get some of it to stick.
2. Most salespeople do not know how to qualify a prospect as a potential customer or client. Anyone who says they are interested or who takes an appointment from the salesperson is usually qualified (in the salesperson's mind) because the salesperson becomes emotionally involved (much more on this in future posts). Salespeople forget that the prospect must have a problem the salesperson can assist with, money, time and resources available, and have a decision-making process in place.
3. Most salespeople commit "UNPAID CONSULTING" which involves giving away too much product knowledge too early in the selling cycle. They have mastered the art of answering questions, because they know the answers, and give little regard to how much more power they would have if they actually listened and added some good questions to their selling arsenal. Between the Buyer / Seller relationship, the Buyer is almost always in control of the questioning process.
4. Most salespeople are locked into a set of beliefs that are not supportive to selling. They have "Head Trash" that they don't even know exists between their ears. Examples: "Prospects that think it over will eventually buy from me. I must educate my prospect. I can't ask my prospect about the amount of money available. I must go through a gatekeeper before getting to the decision-maker."
5. Many salespeople have a strong need to be liked by others and a high need for approval. They confuse the need to build trust and rapport in the selling process with the need to be liked as a person. This is a deadly weakness and a salesperson with a high need for approval will generally lack the ability to close and have a pipeline full of "think-it-overs" and "call me next quarter" which they will argue are qualified prospects, just not ready to buy now.