Selling to Large Companies: Avoid These Mistakes

The number two biggest mistake that I see sales people make all the time is the use of self-serving verbiage. Their taught by their marketers and their corporate executives that they’re really supposed to describe all the neat things that their product or service can do and so they’re told to use words like state of the art, leading edge, robust, seamless integration or passion for excellence and great service. And they think that those words are something that corporate decision makers will jump up and down when they hear. But I’ll tell you what happens when they hear those words. They think self-serving sales person and they delete you. So if you want to get into corporate accounts, you need to change your language and stop talking nice about your product or services and instead focus on their needs.

And the final big mistake that I see sales people making to crack into corporate accounts is they quit too soon. Many sales people I talk to say that they will call three to five times and they’ll leave messages and if they don’t hear back, they assume that the person is clearly not interested but that’s not true. The person you’re trying to reach who works in the corporation today is so swamped, absolutely overwhelmed with work, and honestly, they don’t have time to call you back. In my work with clients, I tell them that they need to make 8, 10, or even 12 contacts with corporate decision makers. It could be using the phone. It could be voice mail. It could be invitations, numerous things but plan from the get-go that you need to reach people at least 10 times. If you change these three behaviors, if you conduct your pre-call research; if you keep on calling and you stop using that self-serving verbiage, you’re going to find that corporate decision makers will want to meet with you.