15 Prospecting Mistakes B2B Salespeople Make
People would have laughed at you if you had told them a decade ago that there are prospecting mistakes that B2B salespeople make. The internet has made it easier than ever to learn just about anything you want. So with all this content and information available, how did you know which ones to learn from and which ones actually work?
Luckily for you, BBC Member, we’ve produced a list of the fifteen prospecting mistakes that B2B salespeople make. Remember, that while the first step is completing any of this amazing information, the second and possibly more important step is taking action even if it’s imperfect action.
15 Prospecting Mistakes B2B Salespeople Make
Worst Mistakes Salespeople Make in B2B Sales Prospecting
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Using Lead Generation Without Specification
It’s important to be very specific when choosing your ideal leads! Knowing exactly who your prospects are is crucial, especially in B2B sales. If you have a sizable pool of potential customers, but they don’t actually fit your product or service, you’ll just waste a lot of time and be let down.
Although your business solution is excellent, not all businesses on earth require it (maybe). As a result, when choosing your ideal leads for your sales strategy, you must be very particular. In the challenging lead generation process, the more specific you are, the more time, energy, and resources you save!
Making the ideal prospect profile is the solution.
How can you and your sales team target lead more precisely? The process begins with developing an ideal customer profile. An elaborate description of your ideal prospect is contained in an ideal customer profile. It contains information about their psychographics and demographics, to name a few. You should all sit down and create that profile before you and your sales team even consider any tactics to generate leads. And if your business is a B2B one, you should be as specific as you can!
Just keep in mind that it’s preferable to have a small number of quality leads rather than a large number of shoddy ones if the profile you and your team create makes it harder for you to identify them. Don’t get your sales process off to a bad start! If you want to ultimately close more deals, be picky up front.
2. Difficult Sales Outreach
Overcomplication is at the root of the biggest errors in B2B sales and outreach is perhaps the area where sales teams over complicate their sales process the most. The truth is, you don’t need to use aggressive, overly eager sales techniques to compel your prospects to respond. An outreach strategy may appear difficult and impressive from the outside, but that doesn’t guarantee that it will be successful. What is more efficient is to adhere to a set of fundamental outreach strategies and deliver them flawlessly.
For instance, despite having a bad reputation, cold calling and emailing are still two of the best outreach strategies available. Although they are somewhat difficult, they are not complicated. If you can make your sales calls and emails as high-quality as possible, your chances of closing the deal will increase. Your company’s bottom line will significantly improve if you start to concentrate on basic, straightforward outreach techniques and make them as high-quality as you can.
Easy Outbound Sales Strategies is the solution.
You ought to concentrate on straightforward but effective outreach strategies. These ten 10-minute sales techniques are great illustrations of how prospect outreach doesn’t have to be difficult or time-consuming in order for you to get a response. When it comes to outreach, it’s frequently less about the sales technique you employ and more about how you employ it that helps you hear “yes” more frequently.
3. Not Following Up
You, therefore, place one cold call. Another follows. After which, another. Nothing, though. Every call is ineffective. Even worse, prospects aren’t just rejecting your offers; they aren’t even answering the phone! Did you know that it typically takes a salesperson five attempts to get a prospect to respond?
Therefore, whether you close the sale or not can depend on your willingness to consistently follow up, even just a few times.
Being persistent with prospects is the solution.
Even if you have the best sales pitches ever, you probably won’t get the chance to use them if you don’t make an effort to stay in touch with your potential customers. After making your initial outreach attempt, regularly following up with prospects is one of the key elements to achieving sales success. Simply put, persistence is the key to success.
Don’t interpret a prospect’s delayed response as a rejection. Instead, put yourself in their shoes. What are some reasons they might not be responding to you if any? Although we frequently imagine our prospects as people who are not at all like us, this is not the case. Additionally, they experience almost identical difficulties as we do.
You don’t need to be concerned with upsetting or overwhelming your potential customers. Just keep contacting them until you receive a response. If you’re sincere about helping them get past their challenges, it will all be beneficial in the end.
Worst Mistakes Salespeople Make in B2B Sales Presentations
Congratulations! Now that you have some good prospects in your hands, you’re ready to present your sales pitch. Finally, this is your chance to shine. Avoid making these fatal sales presentation mistakes if you want to really impress prospects!
4. Taking control of the sales conversation
Your initial sales pitch serves two main objectives, including:
- introducing yourself and your solution to potential customers
- determining the customer’s problems
Finding your customer’s needs is the more crucial of the two, more specifically, what hurts them!
You’ll be able to pinpoint their primary sources of struggle if you let them speak the majority of the time. They will naturally reveal to you the source of their problems if you steer the conversation in the right direction.
Many salespeople make the error of assuming they are already aware of the main issues the prospect is facing. Because they believe they know the answers, they take control of the sales conversation.
Letting the Prospects Drive the Conversation is the solution.
Let your prospects take the lead during the sales conversation rather than doing all the talking. Allowing them to speak also gives them the impression that they are in charge of the situation, which gives them the freedom to express all of their frustrations.
Consider it. Wouldn’t you feel like you were being sold to if you were in their shoes and your sales rep wouldn’t stop talking for even a brief moment? You would, at the very least, have a bad customer experience.
5. Including Sales Pitch Facts
Trying to sell facts about a product or service is among the biggest sales mistakes reps make. For instance, they use statements like “this car has 400 horsepower” or “this CRM system has customizable tools” to win people over.
Then what? Even though the facts are crucial, they don’t actually make the sale. A sales leader making the fatal error of focusing their sales pitches on facts is unacceptable! They won’t ultimately achieve the outcomes they desire!
Telling sales stories is the solution.
B2B sales strategy entails more than just disclosing every feature of your good or service in the hopes that potential customers will take notice. Instead, it involves creating a narrative about your good or service and then presenting it to prospective customers. Stories are valuable. The best storytellers are the most effective salespeople. Every sale can become a story thanks to their expertise!
6. Ineffective Sales Training
There are a plethora of different sales training courses available. Finding the best option among all the available ones is a headache in and of itself. Additionally, the issue with almost all sales training programs is that they only provide theoretical instruction rather than allowing participants to engage in real-world practice.
The majority of sales training programs hire sales representatives who already have knowledge but don’t teach them how to put it to use. While having knowledge can be beneficial, it is useless if sales representatives don’t know how to use it!
Giving salespeople more control is the solution.
Simply knowing how to do something is insufficient. In actuality, simply knowing how to do something is meaningless. The only thing that counts in sales is the ability to put the learned information to use in real-world sales scenarios. Empowering sales representatives is a better way to phrase this.
How effectively a person can stand up for themselves and their knowledge in any situation is defined by their level of empowerment. It has to do with being self-reliant and capable of acting decisively. If you don’t empower your sales reps, don’t expect them to perform well. The very best sales courses accomplish this. They equip sales representatives with the knowledge and abilities they actually need to succeed in every sales scenario, including:
- The use of sales psychology
- Negotiation
- Scaling sales deals
These are all empowering abilities. They focus more on action than sales theory.
Salespeople’s worst closing sale errors
The very end of the sales process is arguably the most frustrating place to err in B2B sales. Even if you follow all the rules, one fatal mistake on the last lap can ruin your entire race. Avoid being the person who drops the sale right before the finish line. The most typical closing sales errors and how to avoid them are listed below:
7. Not having the necessary items to complete the sale.
Imagine you are prepared to deliver the best pitch ever at the sales meeting. Up until this point, everything you did as far as lead generation, lead outreach, and creating the ideal sales pitch went perfectly. The pitch is then a success! Is there any alternative way to explain it? The chief decision-maker then inquires, “When can we get started?”
You halt. You believed that your prospect’s desire to make a purchasing decision was immature at this point in the sales process. You are aware of your accomplishments, but you did not anticipate their hasty attempt to close. That brief pause develops into a protracted awkward pause. Your prospects can now begin to doubt you because the door has been left open.
In sales, situations like this one are all too typical. Sales representatives perform flawlessly, but they lack a deal to put on the table. A prospect might be prepared to close at any time. Just enough time is left for your prospect to fall through the cracks if you are unprepared for that situation.
Arriving prepared is the solution.
Never ever enter a meeting without a perfectly crafted deal in place. A perfectly planned deal should at the very least include the following:
- How do you plan to put your deliverable into practice
- How do you intend to regularly communicate with the prospects
- How much do you intend to charge them
No matter where you are in the sales process, your deal needs to be ready to go. Don’t be the person who, due to lack of preparation, loses the sale at the last minute.
8. Price-Negotiation
How many times have you experienced this? You reach the part of the sales pitch where you specify the terms of the agreement. When you state your price, the prospect’s eyes widen a little, and they become much quieter. Your price tag has undoubtedly shocked them, and you are concerned that this is it.
You start a price negotiation in an effort to try to save the sale. That, in your opinion, will ensure their loyalty. Whatever you do, don’t make your price negotiable if you ever find yourself in this situation. Get rid of the notion that you need to compromise on your standards in order to convince customers to buy from you.
Never lower your value out of concern that a potential customer will turn you down. In the end, you’ll only lose more.
Maintaining high standards is the solution.
Never bargain your price with potential customers. The goal of B2B sales is to establish an equitable relationship between two businesses. Your prospects must comprehend and accept this if they want to proceed if you place a monetary value on your good or service that is equal to the value of your solution because the relationship will only suffer if it begins on unfair terms because one party isn’t receiving everything they truly deserve.
Additionally, consider whether or not your prospect is really a good fit for you if they don’t understand that you need that particular sum in order to give them exactly what they need. Even though you shouldn’t haggle over price, you can still be adaptable.
A simpler choice is to create a flexible payment schedule.
To assist prospects, you can be accommodating with your terms, but you shouldn’t ever compromise your standards of quality. Because if you do, you will only be asking for a resentment-based relationship.
9. Take things less seriously.
The sales process should be enjoyable even though the stakes could not be higher. While it may occasionally be stressful, it should also be enjoyable so that you and the prospects look forward to your sales calls and meetings. When you take things too seriously, you exude a bad vibe that eventually contaminates potential customers. Even though you might not be aware of it, you are unintentionally upsetting them. Once more, sales can be stressful, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have fun with them!
Being authentic is the solution.
It’s simpler to say than to do. And given that selling is all about telling stories, you might be wondering how you can be yourself there. Being yourself means approaching the sale in a way that comes naturally to you. Instead of hiding your distinctive personality, tell a story that brings it out.
Being true to yourself makes you more endearing by default. Additionally, prospects are more likely to respond positively to you when you are more likable. They will ultimately feel more comfortable trusting you because of that positive energy. And as you are already aware, the basis of a fruitful sales relationship is trust.
10. Not Looking Into Lead Research
It’s likely that if your leads approach you cold, they will get lost in a sea of other leads and never hear from you again.
Thoroughly investigating your leads before contacting them is the solution.
This will not only give you more insight into the problems your prospects are experiencing, but it will also explain how you can assist them in resolving those problems.
11. Not placing enough emphasis on brand building
For a business or product to generate leads and leave a lasting impression, brand building is crucial. Most B2B marketers ignore this, and as a result, they suffer. The brand is the most effective way for your business to stand out from the competition, regardless of whether you are a developing business or seeking to develop a visionary product or service.
You can easily establish credibility by concentrating on emotional marketing and developing a strong brand identity, which will help you attract customers and inspire staff.
12. Pitch lacked originality
Despite the fact that creativity isn’t typically associated with B2B sales, the best marketers actively seek out new ways to prospect.
You can build a strong brand by starting with your prospects’ needs and how you can meet them. By thinking outside the box, B2B marketers can strengthen relationships with their customers. Being inventive makes you stand out. Gain their trust by sending them personalized, carefully targeted emails that read like a conversation.
13. Neglecting to Interpret Your Results
It’s crucial to evaluate what went well in every interaction, whether it be a phone call or an in-person meeting. What could we do better?
Marketers can find opportunities to enhance the customer experience and work to develop solutions by comprehending their needs and goals.
14. Pitching Lack of Sensitivity and Humanity
B2B companies may occasionally come off as stuffy and formal, but creative people are aware that you don’t always have to use formal language to pique your audience’s interest. Giving a little bit more than is expected is the key to being edgy. If it is not genuine, you risk alienating people, especially millennials.
However, don’t be afraid to incorporate some edginess into your copywriting, as it can be done in a way that resonates with the emotions of your target audience.
15. Pitching while not familiar with your products
Knowing your product is even more important than knowing your customer. If you are unaware of the benefits your product offers, your potential customers won’t know what it achieves or how it will benefit them.
It is essential to conduct a thorough analysis of your product because doing so will help B2B marketers build a company that sells high-quality, problem-solving products. Any problems with a product ought to be clarified, and it’s worth ought to be determined.
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