Avoiding Killer Mistakes

Here’s what not to do if you want a successful sales career.

REVIEWED BY KELLY QUIGLEY

Killing the Sale: The 10 Fatal Mistakes Salespeople Make and How to Avoid Them
By Todd M. Duncan (Thomas Nelson Inc., 2004)

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There’s no shortage of tips about what you should do to close the big sale. But this new book takes a different tack, focusing on what not to do. Killing the Sale deals with the 10 fatal mistakes that can destroy not only a deal, but an entire sales career. These aren’t simple, isolated mistakes like forgetting to mail a document on time or calling a customer by the wrong name. Rather, these are serious errors in judgment, practice, or performance. Each chapter is devoted to one killer mistake, such as posing (trying to sell before training to sell), begging (seeking your customers’ business before earning your customers’ trust), or gambling (making unplanned calls on unknown customers). And if you can weed out problems like these, you’ll succeed whether you’re selling used cars or luxury homes, the author says.

Tips from the Book:

• Evolve with the marketplace. Markets change all the time and so must you. Study your product as if you were the consumer, survey your clients regularly to find out how their needs change, and evaluate yourself to make sure your life doesn’t become stagnant in pursuit of selling success.
  
• Listen to your prospects. To communicate trust to your prospects, don’t ever go into a selling situation assuming you know what they need. Let them tell you what is relevant, and make listening your first priority. Then share proposed solutions based on what they’ve told you, not what you think they want.
  
• Don’t let business take over your life. You don’t have to be a workaholic to be successful. Do away with the notion that business and pleasure are two separate things; selling and living must complement each other. Success in sales has everything to do with keeping personal priorities.