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Avoiding the Customer 'Eye Roll'--Don't Commit These Sales Blunders

SalesLegacy

Do you want your customers to roll their eyes at you when you sell? Of course not.

Here are a few situations where salespeople have made my eyes roll.

Sales Blunder #1: Raising your price, but not your value.

Just imagine you were selling a product and you wanted to increase its value. You might think that more valuable products cost more, so you raise your price. I’ve seen this one attempted too many times. Do you think it sounds like a good idea? I just rolled my eyes.

Just waving your magic wand doesn’t make your product more valuable. Instead, you must do something that actually does increase your product’s value. One place to start is recognizing that you have provided value in the past, but didn’t demonstrate it to your customers.

Get the data together and make a case to truly demonstrate the value of your product. Sell the value first, and then you can increase your price.

Sales Blunder #2: Asking for a referral with no chance of getting one.

You probably know that referrals are great prospects because they are more likely to buy. Built-in trust is created when you get a good referral--and that makes it easier to sell. Now imagine that you ask for a referral at a first-time meeting when the person you’re asking doesn’t really know you or your work. I’ve seen this too many times to count.

I don’t even think about rolling my eyes. I just walk away.

Now imagine that the person giving the referral calls a prospect and says, “I know you’re asking for a recommendation on X. I know someone who sells X, but I don’t know how good it is or anything about the person.”

How likely do you think that the referral is going to be successful for you? If you think it will be successful, I would have rolled my eyes. Referrals are only great prospects when the person giving the referral already trusts who he or she recommends.

Sales Blunder #3: Acting like you’re smarter than your customer.

Sure you know a lot about your products and services—or at least you should. Just because you know some things that others don’t doesn’t give you permission to think you know best on all things.

Imagine your cost of goods increased and you need to increase your price. You think you know enough about your customer’s business because the business newspapers report his industry is very strong. You have a meeting to ask for a price increase. Your strategy is to tell your customer that he had a good year and he can afford a price increase.

You might not even roll your eyes with that one; you may have just fallen off your seat. If you didn't fall off your seat, let me clarify that the salesman who did this lost the account. When he left the meeting, the buyer immediately began to evaluate competing replacement products.

Sometimes salespeople do some pretty thoughtless things that make people roll their eyes. Your prospects might not roll their eyes--they just might think that they should. I can promise you that they’re not going to buy from you.

Profile: Maura Schreier-Fleming

Maura Schreier-Fleming is president of Best@Selling, a sales training and sales consulting company. She works with business and sales professionals to increase sales and earn larger profits. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results and Monday Morning Sales Tips. Maura focuses on sales strategies and tactics that lead to better sales results. Maura is a sales expert for WomenSalesPros. She is part of their group of top sales experts who inspire, educate, and develop salespeople and sales teams.She speaks internationally on influence, selling skills, and strategic selling at trade association and sales meetings, demonstrating how her principles can be applied to get results. She successfully worked for over 20 years in the male-dominated oil industry with two major corporations, beginning at Mobil Oil and ending at Chevron Corp. She was Mobil Oil’s first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. and was one of Chevron’s top five salespeople in the U.S. having sold over $9 million annually. Maura writes several columns to share her sales philosophies. She's been quoted in the New York Times, Selling Power, and Entrepreneur.