Tell us about the weakest aspects of your sales efforts

In our next issue, we will be taking another stab at our Sales 101 topic, which we seem to run every two years or so.

Very few contractors have formal training in sales. Many contractors are more interested in staying busy and building stuff, than they are in listen to audio or watching video in sales training from the Zig Ziglars of the world.

We don’t think you need to be a “pushy” salesperson to be a brilliant salesperson.

The best salesperson I ever worked with, two decades ago, was such a quiet and soft-spoken individual that he was almost embarrassed every time he would be named “Top Salesperson” at the company annual dinner. If you met him at a party, you would assume if he didn’t tell you, that he worked in a laboratory or as a computer programmer. Anything but call people up and sell them stuff. He just didn’t seem to have the chutzpah.

Having said that, this man avoided ALL of the known pitfalls and traps of the selling profession. He was almost NEVER guilty of:

• Failing to do solid prospecting work
• Failing to talk about benefits, rather than costs, of doing business with him
• Failing to follow up or attempt to close the business

Anyone who sells makes at least one of these mistakes, every single week.

If you have a specific sales “fail” that you are trying to eliminate, tell us what it is. We will try to address these points in our article. You can either post these challenges below, or email spayne@canadiancontractor.ca