Let’s take a look at something that is just as valuable…the five critical errors that most salespeople make – and how to determine if you commit them in your own career. This one takes a dead bead on the most critical errors with loser like accuracy.

These results I’ll be sharing with you are a result of over 20 years of active research, 25 years of selling and a consequence of personally training literally tens of thousands of salespeople. Are you ready? Here we go.

Failure to maintain a constant presence in the minds of prospects or customers. Quite simply, this is a failure to prospect consistently both outside and inside of existing accounts.

Me too thinking. Salespeople fail to be creative and innovative. As a consequence, they don’t differentiate themselves, their products or their organization from everyone else in the pack.

Failure to listen. This is, perhaps, the most classic and common error. The salesperson who hears but doesn’t listen. The salesperson who interrupts prospects, delivers solutions that are off-target, or simply overwhelms prospects and customers with verbiage that clearly communicates a failure to have really listened to anything the other person has said.

Failure to anticipate. A failure to foresee problems in an account. Missing trends, potential problems, needs or necessary solutions that could forestall problems or head off the loss of accounts.

A tendency to focus on process over results. The consequence of this is a poorly executed system of prioritization that virtually cripples the salesperson from delivering effective, bottom line results. In short, they are focused on activities rather than results. As a consequence they believe they’re busy (and they are). They are just busy doing all of the wrong things!

Do you feel that your prospects or customers are driving hard on price?

Do your customers ever buy products or services from other suppliers that you could have provided them?

Do you find you have to revise or redo proposals for prospects?

Have you had prospects reschedule important meetings with you?

Do your prospects submit requests for proposals that you hear about at the last minute?

Do you ever miss out on additional requests for customers?

Have you missed your sales forecasts for at least 2 of the last 4 quotas?

Do you feel that your customers or prospects are looking for deeper, better solutions than what you have been providing them?

Do you feel your prospects or customers get frustrated by errors?

Do you find prospects failing to involve you in their future plans?

Recognition and awareness are essential components to start your success journey.

FREE FAX OFFER: Receive Bill Brooks’ 30 minute audio tape, Evaluating What To Do. Fax request on your business letterhead to 336-282-5707.

©2000 Bill Brooks, The Brooks Group, Greensboro, NC

For almost two decades Bill Brooks has been one of America’s most in-demand sales speakers. The reason behind Bill’s tremendous popularity is that he has successfully accomplished what other sales speakers merely talk about. He enjoys real-world, legitimate sales success, executive experience, in-depth topic expertise, academic preparation, as well as the highest speaking and consulting accreditations. Bill has been a sales executive and marketing manager, an international sales award winner, CEO of a 300 million dollar corporation and successful college football coach with a 70% winning record. He has managed a national sales force of 4000. Bill is author of over 100 video and 200 audio programs, and 9 books. He has hosted over 300 satellite television shows. For more information about Bill Brooks’ speaking, training and consulting services; or learning tools, call 800-633-7762 or e-mail sales@brooksgroup.com or visit his website at www.brooksgroup.com.