A CRM system provides good salespeople with the information and functionality they need to become better salespeople.
But CRM cannot turn a bad salesperson into a good one.
If there are problems with your sales methods, software can’t make you an overnight success.
Issues with your selling approach aren’t going to be fixed by having the latest and best sales tools.
Problems must be addressed at the source, and the source is staring back at you in the mirror occasionally.
Good salespeople share certain traits and habits — so do bad salespeople.
Turning a lousy salesperson into a good one requires identifying and replacing bad qualities with good ones.
But if you really want to be no good at sales, you’ll appreciate the following advice.
Don’t prepare. Wing it.
Research is for academics, and rehearsals are for movie stars. You can save a lot of time by just making up your sales pitch on the fly.
Besides, prospects don’t want to be bothered with many details directly relevant to their wants and needs.
Don’t prospect
Prospecting for new clients takes a lot of work. It’s much easier to wait for potential customers to find you. You can spend that extra time working on a resume for your next career.
Focus solely on new business, not existing customers
Once you’ve got money from a customer, it’s probably best to forget about them. Everyone knows acquiring new business is much easier than selling to an existing customer.
Talk constantly and never listen
Your most significant source of information about a prospect is… the prospect.
If you keep talking long enough, you can be sure they’ll keep all that information to themselves. You don’t want to know all their boring wants and needs anyway, right?
Remember, you have two mouths and one ear.
Don’t ask questions
To be used in tandem with the rule above. Keep your questions to yourself, or you may learn valuable information about the prospect. That could lead directly to making a sale which, as stated before, is a lot of work.
Focus on selling your most expensive product or service
Why focus on dozens of small sales when you can focus on one big one?
Most salespeople survive on a high volume of more minor sales, but that’s not for you. You can probably survive on one or two big sales a year.
If someone says “no,” offer incentives until they say “yes”
Why walk away from a bad deal? You can always make the deal worse by offering discounts or free upgrades, right? Lowering the price is also a great way to demonstrate the value of a product or service.
Mention every single detail
Instead of learning about the essential features and benefits to the prospect, it’s better to take the shotgun approach and just hit them with everything.
Eventually, something has to stick, right? If you hit them with enough information fast enough, they may buy your product or service out of confusion.
Be vague about the next steps
Prospects love uncertainty. If possible, give them no information about delivery, installation, support, or other relevant services. Besides, if they don’t know about those things, they may not ask you to provide them.
That means less work for you. And what are the odds that they’ll take their business to a salesperson who’s upfront about all of those things?
Pummel your prospects with messages on social media
Everybody likes to feel loved. Direct messaging your prospects on their social media accounts is a great way to let them know you’re thinking about them.
Flooding their profiles will help keep you at the top of their minds.
Compose sloppy follow-up emails
A well-composed follow-up email can make a big difference in converting a prospect to a customer.
Instead of using an artificial intelligence app to craft a perfect email, make sure to dream up something on the spot. Throw in some grammatical errors for good measure.
So there you have it — follow these tips, and you will render your CRM system, and most likely your sales career, completely useless.
Unfortunately, a lot of salespeople inadvertently follow this advice every day.
Seeing the slipping numbers, well-intentioned managers look to CRM for the solution.
Until these bad sales behaviors are addressed, the CRM system will likely suffer as much as the prospects.
