Sometimes, no matter what happens throughout a sales conversation - the buyer isn’t interested in closing. But, occasionally during the end of a sales cycle, salespeople make 3 crucial mistakes.

In uncertain times, these mistakes can cost your business a considerable amount of lost revenue.

To help you close more sales, our experts have compiled a list of sales mistakes to avoid in your next conversation.

Hard closing

Using hard closing at the wrong time can lose significant business. Salespeople can compound the problem if they attempt to close the sale at the very time when the customer is most concerned about making the decision.

Most people, faced with pressure to make decisions when they are worried about doing so, will step back and delay further. This is something senior management should pay attention to, as they are often guilty of putting pressure on salespeople to close business to meet quarter-end or year-end targets.

Putting additional pressure on customers to make decisions, especially if it is applied at the wrong time, can actually reduce the chances of the business being won at all.

Not getting the concerns out in the open

In situations where the customer has ceased to communicate, the first step may be to draw attention to the lack of communication, (or to the delays in decision-making or requests for additional information) and to explore why this is happening.

Getting the customer to be open about their concerns can be difficult, since few senior people are willing to admit they are worried about taking decisions.

Rather than asking about their fears in making the decision, try to ask questions to explore any possible concerns they might have about your organisation or capability.

Where we have built strong relationships in an account, or we have a sponsor, we may be able to use these contacts to find out what is causing the concern. We may also be able to enlist their help in planning and executing a strategy to allay these fears.

Once the concern is in the open, the next step is to explore what needs to happen for the customer to feel comfortable that their concern can be resolved.

Asking them for their ideas on what might satisfy their concerns will help to build commitment from them and provide you with a clear picture of what needs to be achieved in order for the sale to progress.

Addressing concerns is one of the ways you can ensure buyers are confident in their decision. Want to read the others in our free whitepaper?

Not building trust throughout the sale

Trust comes through actions, it is slow to build and easy to undermine. We can build the customer’s trust and confidence in us as the sale progresses through the actions we take.

Our first rule should be to under-promise and over-deliver in every transaction we are involved in throughout the sales cycle.

Keeping our promises, delivering information or responding to requests, faster than agreed, builds a positive picture. Being late, failing to respond or giving only a partial response sends a very different message.

We need to ensure that all the people in our organisation who have customer contact behave in the same way. Remember, we are all influencing the customer’s perception of our organisation. We want to avoid all our hard work being undermined by an act of carelessness by another person or department.

Drip-feeding information to the key decision-makers throughout the sales cycle can help to build their confidence in our capabilities. Providing articles about our organisation, recent success stories about sales to other clients, case histories of successful implementations or reports from satisfied customers can all help to build trust.

Such a campaign can help to ensure that by the time the customer is faced with making the decision, they have such a positive regard for our organisation that their fears are minimal. At the very least, building trust should ensure that our customers are more willing to talk to us openly about the risks they see in making the buying decision and put us in a better position to address these issues.

Sales mistakes: avoiding pitfalls through confidence

By not putting additional pressure on the buyer, discussing any concerns, and building trust throughout the deal is to give the decision maker confidence that they’re making the right decision.

Confidence in us, confidence in our product and, most importantly, confidence to deliver what we promise.

Failure to do so is most likely to result in losing deals as, without the customer believing that we are selling will work for them, they’re likely to go with a competitor.

Confidence is, of course, just one element of successful selling. But avoiding the aforementioned mistakes can help to give our buyer the belief in us, our product, and overall service to continue with the sale.

12 steps to confident selling

Our experts have created the 12 steps to confidently sell your solution, with handy tips and tricks to ensure you’re putting your best foot forward throughout the sales process. Get your free copy of ‘Concerns - the end of cycle sales killer: The 12-step plan to creating confidence in your solution’ by clicking the button below.