How To Lose The Sale

You want to 'win' new customers, not lose them! So, let's discuss some common habits of small business owners that should be avoided.

1. Spend most of the time talking about you and your company. Most salespeople from various industries begin their presentation by telling all about their company, their background and wonderful qualifications. Most of this is irrelevant to your prospect. You are actually wasting the person's time. It is more important to invest time in learning about their unique situation by using open-ended questions. Then respond with a customized solution as to how you can save them time, money or hassle.

2. Don't listen to the prospect. Don't waste time asking questions if you aren't going to listen to the responses. Cultivate a sincere desire to help the person, rather than 'lying in wait' to do your 'presentation'. The best salespeople take written notes, ask probing questions and clarify their understanding of the client's needs at the conclusion of each meeting. This enables them to create a proposal or deliver a presentation that addresses their customer's concerns, issues and situation. Don't dominate the conversation. Professional salespeople understand the importance of silence and have learned to become comfortable with it. Unfortunately, too many people talk far too much. You can actually talk yourself out of a sale.

3. Make exaggerated claims about your product or service. Under-promise and over-deliver. While this sounds simple, unfortunately the tendency of too many salespeople is to stretch the truth in order to close a sale. Unfortunately, this will usually come back to haunt them at a later date. Long-term relationships are more important to maintain their loyalty.

You may think that this is pretty basic. Why not pay attention to your behaviour during the sales process. Track how much of the time you are talking and how much time you are actually listening. Avoid these costly mistakes. By knowing how to lose the sale, you can easily gain a competitive advantage by employing the opposite techniques.

What's Your Personal Brand?

According to Wikipedia, a brand is a name, sign, symbol, slogan or anything that is used to identify and distinguish a specific product, service or business. Everything about your 'brand' affects your ability to generate income with your new business. How you are perceived by your potential customers adds to your ability to secure their business. According to our own Jim Koufis, a large part of branding is to create a positive association between the brand and the product or service being offered by a business. An important part of this is your "Personal Brand", including your physical appearance.

In today's business environment, there are many codes of dress. Your personal appearance should reflect professionalism. It needs to convey the right image instantly. For example, if you are meeting someone for the first time for business purposes (this includes networking), you should dress for success. In my years as a travelling sales representative, I always wore a shirt and tie and jacket; that was the accepted business attire at the time. If you are "business to business" company, you may still wear more formal clothing occasionally. If you are a tradesperson, you will probably have a dozen or so t-shirts with your company name and logo to wear on the job and you will have a half dozen freshly laundered 'golf shirts' with your company name to wear when you are visiting a prospective client to do a quote.

Your personal appearance says much about you. When you are clean and well groomed, others will likely conclude that you have self-respect and they will be more inclined to listen to you. Your being appropriately dressed will reflect well on your company and the work you do.

What principles come in play relative to our personal appearance? Especially when we are going to a visit a client, our body, our breath and our clothing should be clean so that others do not find us offensive. For men, a neat personal appearance may include being clean shaven. Of course, we do not all dress alike. We are not expected to. People have different tastes and this is quite proper. But business principles should always be applied. What image are you projecting? Not only should our personal appearance be clean and well arranged but our equipment and tools should also be clean and neat. All of our sales and marketing materials, including business cards, brochures, presentation portfolio, etc. should be neat and well arranged.

Everything we do adds to, or detracts from, our image. And in today's competitive business environment, we have to make sure our image holds up to scrutiny. What's YOUR personal brand? How are you perceived by potential customers?

In summary, what do you need to do? Be neat and clean in your clothing. Hair should be neatly combed. Why is it important? Your personal appearance will influence how others view your business and the work you do. Simply stated, proper personal appearance will help you sell more!