Top 5 Bad Sales Habits that Affect Performance

Your sales team can be one of your organization’s biggest assets, but individual members can also develop bad habits that impact overall performance. Although most bad habits can be corrected through sales executive training, the longer you ignore them, the more difficult habits are to break. Therefore, it’s important to act swiftly.

Here, are five of the most costly sales habits to look out for in your business:

1. Lack of Preparation

Preparation is a difficult balancing act in sales because it’s possible to under-prepare and over-prepare. However, a lack of preparation is fatal. In simplest terms, the more you can make a call or email relate directly to a prospect, the better your chances are of securing a sale. Use company websites, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google, and always make your pitch relevant.

2. Staying in the Comfort Zone

One common and extremely costly trait among sales people is an over-reliance on familiar customers and an aversion to cold calling. For this reason, an emphasis needs to be placed on getting staff over their inhibitions during sales training. Calling existing client may involve less rejection, but hunting new clients is essential for growth.

3. Too Much Waiting Around

Time is money and whether sales people are delayed by the need for internal approval over pricing or they’ve developed a bad habit of wasting too much time on non-selling activities, waiting around will hinder performance. It’s essential that you develop a system where stalling is rare and a culture where your sales team members don’t want to stand still.

4. A Reliance on Intuition

Another common problem with sales team members is that they rely on intuition when there are better tools available to them. Many people think their ‘gut instinct’ can be trusted, but when it comes to sales, you’re better off doing proper research. From there, it’s easier to follow the leads most likely to end in a successful sale.

5. Giving Up Too Early

Finally, one of the most harmful sales habits is a tendency to give up too early. If a sales person does not receive a response to their initial outreach, rather than calling it a day, it often pays off to be persistent. In fact, some experts recommend that you should make at least five different outreach attempts unless the person asks you to stop.