3 Ways Sales Reps Sabotage Their Deals

I spoke with a prospect this week about how his team is getting enough meetings, but they’re not leading to enough real opportunities.

“A third of the meetings we get are BS. My reps want to ensure they’re doing what they’ve been told, but many of these never even turn into second meetings.”

(This is the plausible deniability trap, it’s really common, and there’s more to come in a future article.) 

This leader asked me why he thought this was happening and what I could do to help his team create better opportunities. I’m outlining here what I laid out for him because I think it will help you too.

These are the three biggest ways sellers sabotage their own deals and don’t close more business.

They fail to create tension

You’ve heard me talk about the term tension before. It’s the group of emotions that are necessary for any decision-making process, or else the decision won’t be made.

People buy emotionally and then justify those purchases with logic and data later. Most sellers approach this backward, thinking that the logic of buying their product will be convincing enough to sway the decision in their favor. Then once the results are in place, the customer will have all the feels. It’s a result of how most companies train their sales forces combined with very poor sales leadership, but you already knew that.

Here’s the real reason most of you aren’t creating more tension… Being provocative and stirring up emotions gets really close to toeing the line of ‘salesy’ behavior. 

If you want to see the color run right from a seller’s face, call them salesy. Don’t work so hard trying not to be salesy that you forget you need to make sales. The balance isn’t that tricky if you approach it correctly.

They fail to believe in the value of their solution

Another killer of drive and motivation is a lack of belief in your product. You don’t believe you’re well-differentiated, you’re concerned about competitors in the space, and you assume you’ll lose the deal if you don’t reduce your price.

In the event that you’re even able to get near the final stages of a deal, one of the first things you’ll do in the proposal is remove a good portion of the profit for your company.

Why aren’t you selling at a premium? Why aren’t you digging into why you’re worth paying more for? Why don’t you believe those reasons?

If you can’t wholeheartedly get behind the thing you’re selling, then make a different choice and sell something else. If you really believe in what you sell, then act like it.

They fail to believe in the value they provide

When I left my last corporate job to start this training business, I had to break the news to my biggest account. The first thing I heard from them was, “<gasp>… what are we gonna do without you?”

That was the ultimate validation that I brought real value to the relationship. They were still going to be able to place orders, get products shipped, and receive world-class customer service, but I was a big key to how we worked together.

You are too.

Don’t sell yourself short. In a world where most solutions are very similar and almost commoditized, you and how you sell are often the biggest differentiators. 

You’d be surprised at how often your best customers will forget the names of the companies they buy from because they only remember the names of the reps. That’s the reason non-compete clauses exist in employment contracts. Your bosses believe in you (or at least their attorneys do).

Why don’t you?

The sales process begins and ends with belief. First, you have to believe you can make the sale. Then you have to believe you can make it again. Without it, all the training and work is useless, yet this truth receives little to no attention in onboarding, training programs, or sales meetings.