Stop Blind Selling: 5 Stupid Things Bad Sales People Do

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An impassioned plea to all salespeople everywhere. Stop blind selling 5 stupid things bad salespeople do.

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Sales people have a bad name amongst prospects. Deserved or not, this is the case. Fortunately there is a new way to sell - we call it connected selling. Have a flick through these slides to see what the five stupid things are that bad sales people do, and of course how you can do them better in the new world. If your CRM platform doesn’t support the kind of connected selling we’re talking about here, or you don’t have a CRM tool at all, check out The CRM Switcher’s Guide: Five steps from old-school to social, mobile, cloud- powered CRM: https://www.salesforce.com/uk/socialsuccess/form/crm-switchers-guide.jsp

Transcript of Stop Blind Selling: 5 Stupid Things Bad Sales People Do

An impassioned plea to all salespeople everywhere.

Stop blind selling5 stupid things bad salespeople do.

No offense. This isn’t about you. You’re great at selling.

This is about all those other lazy so-and-sos who give sales a bad name. And who make your life harder.

Trusssstme

Think of it as an exasperated plea on behalf of The Prospect.Every prospect.Everywhere.Here goes… HELP

We know that.It’s one of the hardest jobs in the world.

STOP

It’s hard because people don’t like being sold to. They resist.They distrust.They erect barriers and defenses.They ignore your emails and sidestep your calls.

STOP

Selling in this landscape is hard.

It's our own fault.

As salespeople, we all created this monster.

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me BuyBrand

new

Prospects are defensive and distrustful for one simple reason:

They’ve experienced the way far too many salespeople sell.

Far too many salespeople are self-centered.

Far too many salespeople are self-centered.

They barrel in uninvited and try to cram their inappropriate peg into any available hole.

BUY!

That’s not just ineffective and inefficient, it’s insulting.

BUY!

Here are five silly things salespeople should stop doing so they could sell more and anger people less.

Selling clueless.

The number one sin:

Bad salespeople don’t do their homework.

They don’t do even the most cursory, rudimentary investigation into the prospect and what they might be up against.

So instead of starting with,“I understand your challenges and I can help”,

they start with,

“I’m calling to sell you the thing I’m paid to sell.”

This is bad.

In the old days, doing your homework was hard.

OLD

OLD

You had to go to public libraries to find outdated annual reports.Or call everyone you knew who might know someone who knew the person you’d be selling to.

Today, you’ve got the Internet. And Google. And LinkedIn. And Twitter. You’ve got CRM profiles enriched with social media activity. You’ve got access to massive public databases.

Today, you can find out an incredible amount about any person in any company on a moment’s notice.

malpractice

Not using this awesome asset is quite simply

Selling alone.

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Bad salespeople think they’re superheroes.

They ’d never ask anyone for help.

That's silly.In your own company, there are dozens of people who could give you the insight that cracks open any given opportunity.

Some of them worked with the prospect in a previous job.

Others know the prospect company intimately.

Others are sitting on a critical expertise that’s super-relevant.

wrong

Ignoring these resources is just plain

It used to be hard to discover the resources and expertise inside your own company.

Now it isn’t.You’ve got social-powered collaboration tools that act like an internal Facebook (but with fewer cat videos).

So you can ‘follow’ experts and search for people with relevant experiences and track threads that discuss key issues…

They leverage their resources.Great

salespeople never go it alone.

They leverage their resources.Great

salespeople never go it alone.

Failing to jump on fresh opportunities.

This is a tricky one.Of course, every salesperson wants to seize hot prospects.

But history has shown that not every prospect thrown over the wall from marketing is hot.

That means that, people who have raised their hands to be sold to are being ignored.

Sales and Marketing need to get aligned.

That way, salespeople can trust that a ‘sales-ready lead’ really is ready to be sold to.

The good news: a new generation of marketing automation tools – combined with CRM – is bringing discipline to how businesses manage their lead flow.

The result: salespeople value the leads generated by marketing – and jump on them.

Letting opportunities die.

Sometimes, that's unavoidable:

a prospect company changes priorities or finds another

But often, salespeople simply lose the momentum for one opportunity

while pursuing others.

That can make a huge impact on overall conversions and revenue.And nobody really sees it happening.

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Dashboards keep every opportunity in the spotlight.

In the old days, opportunities weren’t visible to anyone but the salesperson.

Today, with powerful, visual dashboards to track opportunities through the entire pipeline, everyone can see which sales processes have stalled and where they are in the funnel.

HELP

Salespeople and managers can even get alerts to help nudge the opportunity back to life.

opportunity

Because an opportunity is a terrible thing to waste.

Failing to capture what you learn.

Information is the fuel of the sales engine.

The more you know

about every prospect and

opportunity, the more likely you are

to close it.

But a lot of salespeople think of information as a one-way street: they consume it but don’t capture and share it.

sales intelligence

That’s a waste of precious sales intelligence.

Getting into the habit of capturing notes and actions from every prospect interaction is easy.

And the value is enormous:

For yourself – so you can remind yourself where each prospect is, what you’ve learned and what you need to say or do next.

For your team – so anyone can pick up the opportunity at any time.

For later analysis – so you can figure out what works and what doesn’t across many prospects.

Where does all this capturing and sharing happen?

Well, it has to be in the CRM – but ideally it’s in a CRM system with social collaboration built in. For obvious reasons.

ConclusionLet’s make people love being sold to.

SOLD

Sounds like an impossible goal – but why not?

If every salesperson did their homework, educated themselves, used all the resources at their disposal and harnessed the power of their team, selling would be more effective and more enjoyable for all involved.

Blind selling makes it harder for the entire profession.

Intelligent, informed, collaborative, social-powered, data-driven selling is the way forward.

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com helps sales people succeed.

Our Sales Cloud platform increases pipeline generation, reduces sales cycles, and improves win rates.

On average, salesforce.com customers see +36% Sales Productivity, +26% Win Rate, +25% Pipeline, +45% Forecast Accuracy

Further reading:

And for lots more resources on prospecting, dashboards and social-powered selling, visit the Sales Library on our Social Success site.

If your CRM platform doesn’t support the kind of selling we’re talking about here, or you don’t have a CRM tool at all, download The CRM Switcher’s Guide: Five steps from old-school to social , mobile , cloud- powered CRM.

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