Think about the last 25 sales you DIDN’T make.

Did you look for the cause, or just blame the symptoms?

Symptoms like: Couldn’t get an appointment, unreturned phone calls, deleted emails, lost to competition, and the worst symptom of all, lost on price.

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE POP-TARTS! You didn’t make the sale because the prospect wasn’t interested in doing business with you for one of many reasons. Such as:

1. Using closing techniques. Why would you use time-worn, awkward phrases that manipulate the customer and make everyone uncomfortable?

2. Asking the same questions everyone asks. Why aren’t you seizing the chance to engage more intellectually and emotionally?

3. Asking questions about money to try to “qualify” the buyer. You have accomplished nothing, and failed to understand that the buyer is also qualifying you.

4. Comparing yourself to, rather than differentiating yourself from, the competition. No memorability anywhere.

5. Bad-mouthing the competition. Makes you look bad, and suspect.

6. Trying to “find the pain” rather than building rapport and finding the pleasure. Pleasurable things build rapport and help establish a relationship.

7. Meeting with a non-decision-maker. Why?

8. Trying to go over someone’s head to the “real” decision-maker. Too late; you should have started higher in the first place.

9. Talking about your personal life or prejudices. Not good, ever.

10. Blaming the prospect for your issues. Issues like: wouldn’t make an appointment, didn’t respond to an email, didn’t return my call, blah, blah.

11. Not knowing the difference between you’re and your. Misspelled words and poor grammar make you look stupid and lazy.

12. Delivering your sales message, not their buying message. Why are you making a “sales presentation” without understanding why the prospects might want to buy?

13. Making excuses for what went wrong. Not taking responsibility for what you could have done to change it.

14. Failure to talk about outcome and ownership. You sell for a few hours, they buy and use for months, maybe years. Talk about that. Sometimes outcome is misunderstood because you’re focusing on negative issues.

15. Having boring slides. Where’s the engagement in your presentation? What’s different on the slide from what I could have found online?

16. Trying to “type” the prospect. Don’t “type” anyone; just like them and find a few things in common.

17. Trying to “mirror” the prospect. Welcome to the 1950s.

18. Offering no perceived value. When value is missing, all that’s left is price.

19. Believing price is the issue. Price is in your mind way more than it is their mind. Price is only the issue 30 percent of the time or less.

20. Making insincere follow-ups. Trying to disguise the fact you’re just asking for the money.

21. Thinking you’re smarter than the customer. Don’t flatter yourself.

22. Failure to Google yourself. Your customer has.

23. Failure to provide proof that you are what you say you are. Testimonials are the only proof you’ve got.

23.5. The opposite of blame is responsibility. The first step to mastering salesmanship is to accept responsibility for what happens, learn from it, and make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Jeffrey Gitomer can be reached by phone at (704) 333-1112 or by email at salesman@gitomer.com. © 2011 Jeffrey H. Gitomer