Are you Repelling customers?

Yesterday at the airport I listened in on a sales call. Nope….I was not wiretapping eavesdropping or anything else sinister. In fact I could not help but listen because the rep was beside me and speaking on her speaker phone. This is unacceptable sales behaviour.  Ignoring the obvious privacy violations, the lack of call quality its self is enough to drive the prospect into the arms of a competitor.  

A month ago, a sales rep was cutting his finger nails next to me on the plane

Last week I was listening to sales calls and could hear the reps eating lunch on the phone as they spoke to clients.

These are all real life examples of client repellent behaviour.

In sales, your goal is to create a situation in which the customer is attracted to you, feels good about you, and wants to buy from you. This is the whole point of building rapport and a relationship. During the entire sales process every action you take must be working to build on that rapport. If you erode rapport, you repel the customer. And you risk losing the sale. In case you’re wondering, having a sales call on a speaker phone erodes rapport.

Sales conversations are worth doing right – or not doing at all. 

What else erodes rapport during a sales conversation?

• Cell phone going off during a meeting
• Being late
• Not finishing on time
• Making sales calls in noisy areas, or outside even if you are using a headset
• Not remembering who the prospect is when they call you back (a downside of not having a good database system to track your outbound calls)
• Not thanking customers for their time, their orders or their referrals
•  Not taking notes
• Poor personal hygiene – including scufy dress and dirty shoes
• Yawning
• Coffee and / or cigarette breath

Help a fellow sales professional out and add to this list! My goal is to eradicate sales repellent behaviours – and first we need know what they are.

Dedicated to increasing your sales,

Colleen