How to sell a product avoiding the 7 most common mistakes

Trying to sell for the sake of selling will result in mistakes that will aggravate the sales crisis and the loss of potential customers.

Learn how to sell a product effectively and professionally at any time.

Avoid these 7 mistakes when you sell your product:

1. You don't prospect the right target group.

When sales are slowing down, you can't resist the temptation to try to sell your products to anyone who will listen to you. After all, talking to someone - anyone - is more productive than sitting at your desk and waiting for a potential customer to call you. Right?

Maybe not.

Be selective in whom you prospect. Use your current customer base to find the characteristics of your best customers.

With that information, you should develop a profile for your "ideal" prospect. Then look for prospects who have a similar profile. You will find fewer people but you will probably close more sales.

2. You are not selective enough about the prospects you visit.

Showing interest in your product or service is not a strong enough reason to set up an appointment with a prospect.

Finding out why the prospect was interested and what made them interested is part of how to sell your product.  

If the prospect's "interest" is not based on identified needs or desire for your product or service - either now or in the immediate future - there is no compelling reason to visit the prospect. The purpose of setting up an appointment is to begin the sales process... not to make friends or have a pleasant conversation.

3. You don't take control of the conversation with prospects.

It is not enough that prospects have recognized the need or desire for your product or service. They need to be willing to talk about why they need or want your product or service.

To prevent the conversation from veering off in any direction, you need to make it clear at the time of the appointment that the main objective of the appointment is to determine whether your product or service is appropriate to meet the prospect's needs and that the focus of the conversation will be to explore and understand those needs.

4. You don't prepare for appointments properly

Many times, salespeople set appointments... but forget about them until the day before the appointment. For them, preparation consists of nothing more than just reviewing the notes that came out of the phone call when the call was made... and maybe looking at the prospect's website, advertising, or marketing materials.

Can you answer the following four questions about your next appointment with a prospect?

1. What are the first three questions you will ask after you say "Hello"?
2. What questions will you ask to build trust and get to know the prospect?
3. What questions will you ask to explore the prospect's needs and to find out the events that happened to bring those needs to light?
4. What commitment(s) will you ask the prospect to commit to if there is a match between your product or service and the prospect's needs?

If you have not identified and practiced the questions you will ask to begin the meeting, if you have not thought about the prospect's requirements, qualified for the opportunity, and systematically, brought the appointment to an appropriate conclusion, then YOU ARE NOT PREPARED.

5. You do not establish credibility or demonstrate expertise.

When you go on an appointment with a prospect, your job is to help them see their situation from a different perspective... and discover elements or aspects of their situation that they had not previously recognized. To do that, you not only have to know a lot about your product or service, but you also have to know the specific reasons why people would need it, the situations that generate the need, and the consequences of not meeting those needs.

More importantly, you must be able to ask questions that allow prospects to make those "discoveries."

For example:

When you asked your production manager to measure the differential injection pressure between the beginning and end of the production cycle and determine how much it contributed to inconsistent sample production, what did he tell you?

Enlightening your prospects with appropriate questions to demonstrate that you understand their needs and that you have what it takes to solve their problems or fill that needs is the most important skill to master.

6. You don't ask tough questions

To properly qualify opportunities, you must be able to identify the key aspects of the situation, define elements on which the dispute is based, uncover information that they carefully keep secret, and obtain commitments to things they would not normally commit to. You won't accomplish any of this without asking tough questions.

You must also be willing and able to ask these questions consistently and confidently, knowing that you probably won't like the answers you get...because they may serve to disqualify the opportunity.

But the sooner you know that investing time in that opportunity will only lead to a dead end, the sooner you can disengage and keep looking for better opportunities.

7. You're in a hurry to make introductions

Many salespeople love the idea of making presentations and it's not the best way to sell a product at an early stage. They see them as opportunities to establish the value of their products or services by demonstrating unique features that differentiate them. But you can't establish the value of something until you have determined what aspects, if any, are relevant to the prospect's situation.

The real purpose of the presentation is to confirm your ability to deliver the solutions that prospects are predisposed to buy. And how do you know what these solutions are? You discover this by properly qualifying the opportunity.

Until you have discovered the specific reasons why the prospect will buy from you (and not your competition), the funds available for the purchase, the decision-making process, and (assuming the decision-making requirements are met) obtained a commitment to make the purchase... you should not make presentations.

Making presentations before properly qualifying opportunities will lead you to leave the presentation without a decision and only with the prospect's promise of "I'll think about it".

As you can see these mistakes in how to sell a product are very common, so it is important to consider them over and over again every time an opportunity to sell your products opens up.