National Sales Center

Discover The Single Deadly Sales Mistake

You were probably looking for information about sales mistakes and discovered many lists… some listing the Top 50 sales mistakes.  Now I come along to tell you there is one sales mistake that is the king of all sales mistakes.

Sorry to disappoint by having only one sales mistake for you but rest assured your disappointment will be short lived. If you are guilty of making this sales mistake, all the other mistakes don’t really matter and I have yet to find this sales mistake on any of those lists.

This sales mistake can be described in a single word… “Assumptions”. Making assumptions is a fatal sales mistake and one of the most common sales mistakes. Sales strategies must be based on facts and must never be based on assumptions, yet too may reps do it all the time.

Salespeople are always trying to “connect dots” in their minds to develop an understanding on how they are progressing in the sales process with a prospect. Since the “dots” are pure fantasy, these reps aren’t developing an understanding of anything. Instead, they are creating their own fantasy. More often than not, they give their fantasy a positive spin because it’s, after all, their fantasy. Can you see why I feel this is a fatal sales mistake?

Just consider some of these sales mistakes caused by assumptions…

• Assuming the prospect is fine with your price because the prospect didn’t object to it.
• Assuming you’ve established solid rapport with your prospect because the prospect was polite to you.
• Assuming your prospect isn’t considering the competition because the prospect never mentioned them.
• Assuming your prospect would buy from you because the prospect didn’t mention any objections.

This list could go on forever.

How common is this sales mistake? Consider how often multiple salespeople from different companies are in competition for the same order and each rep is forecasting the deal to close in their favor with an eighty percent probability. The math tells me that all but one of those reps is living in “sales fantasy”. In fact, almost ever sales forecasting problem can be traced back to false assumptions.

How can you avoid this deadly sales mistake? Simply decide to live in a world based on facts. If you don’t know something… ask. Let the competition base their sales strategies on assumptions. I want you to leave this sales mistake behind forever and I hope you’ll remember this sales training message.

I wish you great sales success!

Nick

Tags: Sales Training