Business-to-Business (B2B) sales can be complicated. There are many pitfalls that can end up trapping sales deals. You have to be confident and disciplined enough to trust your intuition. Here are 5 mistakes to avoid making if you are going to close more deals.
- Selling instead of building relationships
The best B2B sales strategy is to stop selling – customers want to feel they are making a choice and not being sold a product or service. The sales conversation should be identifying problems and suggesting solutions. Don’t become tunnel-visioned because you only want to find out if they are interested in purchasing your product. Engage your prospective customers in discussions around their business needs.
2. Overselling your product
Sales representatives tend to oversell due to discouraging sales goals or bad sales pitches. When you oversell it tells the customer that you don’t care about them directly. This sales mentality is out of date and is the easiest way to turn customers off and risk losing future sales opportunities. Value is in the eye of the beholder. What you think is valuable may not be valuable to the customer.
“Sell the ROI of your service, not the features.” – Peter Helmer
3. Rushing your prospects
It’s always good to ask your prospects for the next steps and follow up after each meeting, but you also need to give people the time to consider your proposal. When a salesperson becomes pushy, it turns prospective customers off. When you are in communication with the prospect, make sure to understand their hesitations and have a response to the objections they may have.
B2B sales is a challenging market and usually resistant to change. The sales cycle takes longer due to businesses having multiple decision-makers, but when you have weaknesses in your sales process it leaves you with little to no results. Or worse horrible retention.
Stephen Covey refers to improving the way you work as “sharpening your saw” so that you are periodically learning to work smarter and not just hard.
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