Bad sales habits that are hurting your sales productivity

Bad sales habits! Yes, you read that right. At some point in your life, as a sales professional, you pick up habits that seem perfect at that moment.

You never see this coming, and these habits start having a negative effect on your sales productivity. Sales professionals will even accept this guilt of developing bad sales habits under their breath.

Some of us have had more grave problems than others and some have taken more time to overcome them. But, the truth remains the same. Bad sales habits are almost an inevitable part of being a sales professional.

In short, bad sales habits draw us away from our goals and deter us from performing our tasks smoothly and efficiently. The most efficient salespeople are those who seldom get carried away by bad sales habits. They work in a smart manner every day of the week to enhance their sales productivity.

Here are some of the most commonly found bad sales habits that sales professionals must avoid.

1. Lack of Planning

“Around 8% of salespeople get 80% of the sales.”

Having a clear set plan of action is crucial for a sales manager. What’s more important is that you must never let the circumstances let you drive your day.

Rather set your priorities and act accordingly.

Here’s the golden rule! Whenever you leave for home, keep you tomorrow’s tasks ready. You must have a plan of action for your entire week, month, and quarter.

Of course, things may change on your daily schedule, but if you have your priorities for the day and utilize an employee scheduling app it will help you accomplish more things on an everyday basis.

Having a plan is always helpful in creating an environment that is driven with sales productivity as its focal point.

2. Not using a CRM software

The most popular sales tools include CRM, social prospecting, data and list services, email engagement, phone, and sales cadence (Sales for Life).

CRM has become an integral part of any business, whether a small one or an enterprise. Since every business is using some kind of CRM, it would be a big mistake if you don’t utilize one.

An efficient sales professional can use CRM to fetch, create, and get in touch with their contacts using a CRM system. Modern CRM systems have built-in calling features that can be used by sales reps for timely follow-ups.

With automated sequences, you can up your sales productivity. Set up a series of emails that can take follow-up according to conditions set by you.

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3. Avoiding criticism

Sales professionals do have their fair share of flaws. And sometimes they don’t even know it. Every sales professional has to go through the criticism part.

They need to have patience and must not take the criticism in a negative way. They need criticism to guide them to get better.

Positive criticism always pays well. Sales reps must know how to take all the positive and leaving the negative out.

4. Ineffective follow-ups

“44% of sales reps give up after 1 follow-up” – Salesmate

As a sales professional, you will agree that the most critical part of your daily activity is to follow-up on your daily sales calls, emails and appointments.

Sometimes even the most talented and hard-working sales reps fail to achieve their sales targets. And sometimes they lose their prospects because of unsuccessful follow-ups.

Sales reps are not going to lose their bad sales habits of not following up without a little help from modern-day sales CRM.

Proper follow-up leads to more information about the prospect’s need. Every detail taken into consideration helps shape the deal into a close.

Following up with your prospects over a call or text, email is counted as the nicest habit a sales rep can develop to become productive.

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5. Give prospecting a miss

“Around 80% of salespeople who fail, do so because they don’t prospect.”

Every sales rep has to hone the skill of prospecting. Prospecting is important for your sales process.

The goal of prospecting is to develop a database of potential customers and then communicate with them in a systematic manner in the hopes of converting them into paying customers.

Sometimes the prospects you talk to won’t be ready to make a purchase. This is not the point where you give up on them.

They might not be financially ready to pay for your services. Or they might not have the need for your solution at the moment.

They also might not be aware that they need your solution. This is where prospecting skills come into play.

Use your CRM software as a tool to keep your prospects educated and informed about the latest feature or integration that you have done. You never know, the prospect might ping you for another round.

6. Not prepping for objections

Objections are part and parcel of sales. Prospects will object to your sales pitch, your timing of the calls, your pricing, your features, etc.

Sales reps make a grave mistake of not preparing the answers or way around to the probable objections prospects might make.

Do a little background check on your prospect (you might also call it homework) before pitching your solution to them.

7. Giving up too soon

To successfully reach out to a lead, a salesperson must never give up the pursuit until at least six to eight times. – Matt Heinz, Heinz Marketing

This is a very common sales habit that we have seen in sales reps. Giving up too soon. If you don’t master the art of healthy persistence you will never be able to make a career in sales.

By healthy persistence, we mean keeping a timely conversation cycle with prospects who need your services. You will never want to flood someone with your features and offers who don’t want them in the first place.

Only omit a lead if he gives you a shout out that hey, back off, I am no need of your service.

To conclude

Your sales team needs to learn the art of being productive and also understand that the goals of an organization and individual sales reps cannot be different.

If you want to make your sales team more productive and help them get rid of these bad sales habits, give them the tool they need.

Small business CRM like Salesmate can help you with features like shared team inbox, built-in calling, workflow automation, email & text sequences, and many more.

Take our 15-days free trial and explore every bit of Salesmate!