8 Most Common Mistakes in Sales Processes

In a previous blog, we already talked about creating an efficient sales process. I will now mention some of the mistakes that you should avoid so that you can reach success.

Most Common Mistakes and Ideas to Avoid Them

1. Your sales process doesn't match your buyer's purchasing journey. It is a very common mistake to build a sales process without considering our buyer's purchasing journey. In other words, you build it based on what you consider -as a sales person- you should do, rather than considering the client's particular process: his doubts, needs, concerns. We must offer answers to our clients and, in order to do so, we should always consider him and listen to him
2. Use the price of your product as your only commercial tool. Your sales team must know your product in depth so that they can recognize the real value that it offers beyond price. If the only thing they can offer is that "it is the cheapest in the market" and don't know any other positive characteristics of the product, they aren't really offering a real value proposal. Knowing your product in-depth (both by the sales team as well as the client) should always be present in your sales process.
3. A not well-defined sales process. Not defining well the concrete actions to follow so a prospect moves from one stage to another, leaves the door open to subjective interpretations and mistakes. Your team must be able to know and understand what they have to do in a step-by-step manner, so that they can all put it into practice following the same guideline. This also helps finding out the exact momento when something went wrong, in case it did.
4. Not documenting your process. It should all be thoroughly recorded in a document to which everyone can have access. Don't think that your team will memorize it all in just one training course, they should be able to find specific information at hand.
5. Not sharing it or practicing it with your team. You have created your sales process, it is all well defined and documented, but you forget to share it with your team and most of all, practicing it with them. You must go over the obstacles that your team faces on everyday basis and try to give an answer to them based on your process. Practice with concrete cases, several times. Leave no room for doubts.
6. "Marrying" a sales methodology. It is true that your process should be framed within the specific sales methodology that you've chosen yet, there isn't a single "good" or "ineffable" methodology, one that solves it all. You must always stay open to changes and adjustments, as well as to apply techniques from other methodologies (that don't clash with each other, of course). Your intention is to sell, not to prove that a one-and-only methodology works.
7. Assuming that your sales process is a map that will work forever. Your sales process is never done, it will always need some adjustments according to the results and data analysis that you run. Maybe what you thought would work well does in fact work but only during some period of time. Or maybe, on the other hand, you are surprised by finding out that something you though wouldn't work, in fact did, and quite successfully! You must always make adjustments according to the answer that our actions receive and to the changes that take place with the passing of time.
8. Not having a way to evaluate your process. In order to always match our process with the reality and the results, we need to have measuring tools that will help us evaluate which actions work and which not so much. We need well defined metrics, ones that will provide objective data in order to make the proper adjustments that we need to apply on our sales process so we can get the results that we are aiming to get.

If you would like to know more about sales processes and the sales tools that you can use in order to optimize your team's work and increase your ROI, feel free to contact us. We are always happy to help.