Five Ways To Lose A Sale

When you begin the company formation process – and indeed right through the whole start up phase- one of the main challenges most companies will face is attracting and retaining new customers. Never has this become more important than in the current economic climate, where competition for a percentage of decreasing consumer spend is at an all time high. Yet, entrepreneurs continue to make mistakes when trying to attract new business.
Whether, you are speaking to a new prospect on the telephone, at a networking event or even if you have managed to get a meeting, you only have a short amount of time to engage them in your brand and proposition. Please find below five things that will lose a prospect’s attention and result in the loss of a potential sale:
1. Begining a conversation with the line ‘Hello, how are you?”
2. Engaging in meaningless and irrelevant small talk
3. Leading with a “hard sell” introduction
4. Giving them a lot of marketing jargon about how you can help their business
5. Explaining to them what other organizations you work for
Ultimately, the business sector needs to be handled differently to that of retail. Not only are most business professionals’ skilled sales people, they are also probably contacted on numerous occasions throughout the day by people offering ‘the next big thing’. Therefore, they are not necessarily interested in your company history, brand identity or the other organizations your work for – that will come later – in the first instance, they want to know how your product or service can help them improve the way they do business and –effectively – increase their sales.
In tomorrow’s post we will look at how you can engage a potential client and get the sale.