7 Tips For Becoming The WORST Sales Person

OK, you caught me on a bad day. You caught me on a day where I don’t really want to give “tips on excellence.” I’d much rather give tips on how to be the WORST Sales Person. That’s right. How can you be mediocre at selling?

Here they are:

1. Have No Vision & No Goals. Stop with the goal setting. It’s all a scam. You don’t need goals. Just go out and do it, do it, do it. Pay no attention to your personal goals. Your prospect doesn’t care about your goals, so why should you? Just work extra hard. It’ll all work out.
2. Be Overly Enthusiastic. Just scream louder. Sell harder. Don’t let the prospect get a word in. Why would you. You know what they need already, so why let them tell you. It’s a waste of time.
3. Spend Zero Time on Your Message. Just allow the prospect to connect all the dots on how your value will solve their problem – or help them achieve their dreams. They’re smart enough aren’t they? Just tell them how great you are.  Tell them how they’d be an idiot not to buy from you. They’ll surely buy – especially if you keep telling them.
4. See Everyone as a Prospect. If they’re breathing and even, remotely, resemble a good prospect, sell on! You’re just playing the game of odds. At some point, someone will buy. It’s better to see everyone as a prospect because then you get to put them on your pipeline report – and your manager will be ecstatic about all the opportunity you’re uncovering.
5. Wing Everything. Have no prospect plan. Have no personal business plan. Have no meeting plan. After all, you’ve been doing this for years so why do you need a process? You have your personality! What more could you need?
6. Forget The Follow Up. You know follow-up is overrated, don’t you? No need to recap what happened in the sales call. Surely, they took notes. It’s just a waste of time.
7. No More Questions. You have what you have so why do you care about the prospect’s pain and goals? It’s not like you’re going to change your offer based on what they say, are you? No. So ditch the questions.
8. BONUS TIP: Spend no time at all on developing your self. Forget skill-building. Forget the mental side of selling. Forget working on how to handle difficult circumstances.  Sit back and watch one more episode of “The Bachelor” instead of working on yourself. After all, this is all about your product, isn’t it?

Sound like a plan?

Of course not.

But, remarkably, it’s the way I see lots of sales teams do their job (at least before I get a hold of them). But even though this is an absurd list, it isn’t all that rare.

If you’re a sales person,

Do a quick check-in to see if you’re doing any of these things. I know you may not want to admit them, but just do it, privately. Tell no one if you found a habit you’ve slipped in to.

If you’re the leader of a sales team,

Observe and assess. Are any of these bad habits slipping through because your people are just too busy, doing it, doing it, doing it, to stop and plan?

OK. I got that out of my system. Let’s move back to excellence in the next blog!