Many sales people from small businesses and startups are becoming terrified with sales calls that sabotage their chances of landing a prospective client. This is because of some mistakes that they’re making that kill conversions.
In this article, I will be sharing major sales call mistakes that you should avoid at all costs.
Hopefully, knowing these will also help in improving your cold calling skills and effectively turn prospects into buyers to generate more revenue for your company.
Table of Contents
8 Sales Call Mistakes You Should Avoid
Businesses hire the best sales people for the sales call process to generate more leads and conversions.
However, sales persons still face some major sales call mistakes which often become the game changer and affect the overall revenue goals.
1. Calling only at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.
- Most sales people often make their sales call when they are in office for a while.
- After checking all the emails and doing various paperwork, they begin to start making sales calls at around 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. which tends to be busy hours for prospects.
- They may be attending meetings in their jobs or receiving calls from other agents.
- For example, many insurance agents tend to call during these time slots, assuming that they can get higher conversions.
- Just because you’re being provided with the best cold calling scripts, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t optimize your call times.
- Instead, come up with a unique approach such as calling earlier in the morning, during lunchtime, or later in the evening. Consider calling prospects on Saturdays as well.
- This allows you to get a higher level of engagement in comparison with a generic calling pattern.
2. Always opening conversation with “How are you?”
- Agents usually start the conversation by asking, “Hey, how are you today?” It can annoy and frustrate a lot of prospects.
- Instead, come up with some phrases during the beginning of the conversation that positively catches your prospect’s attention.
- You may begin your conversation by sharing some valuable insights in the marketplace of your prospects based on your market research. Most importantly, try not to sound like other sales people out there.
3. Using the “sales voice” while speaking to prospects
- Try to record your voice next time while speaking to your potential customers. Listen and evaluate your voice.
- Do you sound like you’re normally talking with a friend or family member? Or do you sound more like a salesperson?
- Prospects can easily analyze and pick up this change in the tone of your voice and can easily identify you as a sales person.
4. Talking more than listening to your prospects
- It is said that listening is one of the hardest skills to master yet it plays an important role in every sales call. Most sales people are aware of this but still don’t really put it into practice.
- If you are not listening to your prospect and constantly pitching about your services, you’re likely to lose potential client.
- Being quiet and understanding the information shared by the prospect shows that you are paying attention to their problems and needs. This simple gesture will enable you to close that sale.
5. No proper nofollow-up or next steps
- When a sales person is able to do a good job with pitching products or services to their prospects, it’s possible that they won’t have a proper nofollow-up process.
- For example, they may end up saying that they’ll get back shortly or send prospects more information but not do it promptly.
- You need to understand that this is a major sales call mistake. The main agenda behind the sales call is just not to pitch services and chase prospects around, and hoping that you will connect again.
- You need to have a proper set of steps after you’ve ended the call. One example can be scheduling a calendar invite with the prospect and sending them an invitation immediately after the call.
6. Throwing a lot of information
- Most of the time, sales people often throw all of their information to the prospect. Prospects are too familiar with this tactic and are turned off by it.
- Instead, you should focus on engaging prospects in a conversation to make them understand what’s actually going on. This also helps you determine how to proceed.
- Finally, pitch your services to the prospect in such a way that helps them understand how their problems can be solved and need met. For you to do this successfully, have an understanding of their background.
7. Being overly excited on the call
- Many sales people often show a high level of enthusiasm and excitement while pitching about the products or services on the call.
- An example of being excited about the call is telling prospects that you’ve got the best product in the market at the lowest price.
- No matter how excited you are, try to lower your tempo and primarily focus on the prospect and what they care about.
8. Putting control in your prospects’ hands
- If you are in a position of waiting for the prospect to get back to you, this can be a major mistake. You always need to maintain control of the selling interaction
- Most prospects keep on saying, “This sounds interesting. How about if we get back to you in a week?” Never accept that and be in control of the situation. Moreover, always have the clear next steps in mind on how to proceed in such scenarios.
Conclusion
- These are some of the major sales call mistakes that should be avoided. These mistakes can drastically affect your conversions, sales and overall revenue.
- Also, you also need to understand that having a really robust sales process doesn’t necessarily mean that your prospect is going to invest or purchase your products or services right away.
- If you’re a new sales agent, know that it will take some time and practice to get your calls right. Be patient, keep on learning from every mistake, and most importantly – value your prospects.
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