My review of the book “The 25 most common sales mistakes and how to avoid them” got featured at the Small Business Issues Blog Carnival – Edition 7.

Bernhard Schindlholzer is a Ph.D. Student and Research Associate. The Customer Experience Labs is not about finding the ultimate truth – it’s about starting conversations. The 25 most common sales mistakes and how to avoid them talks about sales mistakes EVEN if you are not a sales person. “When you are giving a presentation to your boss about your latest project or a new business idea and trying to get funding and additional support – this is just as much a selling process as selling life insurance…”

Comment: Some really great tips Bernhard. Lack of listening and Not showing competitive spirit – these are the two top mistakes I have seen sales people make. Very few sales people listen – you have to hold them by their neck and tape their mouth shut (figuratively speaking, of course) and say “LISTEN to me”. I even had a sales person tell me once, “You do not know what you need. My product is what you need.”

 

Find this and other articles over at Atlantic Canada’s Small Business Blog.

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Why should you care about sales mistakes if you are not a sales person? Let’s look at a generic definition Sales is the act of meeting prospective buyers and providing them with a product or service in turn of money or other required compensation. Now if you take one step back and look at the bigger picture, here is what comes to mind: Everyone of us is selling products or services.

When we talk about a sales person, some people think strictly about the person that is walking from door to door selling insurance or newspaper subscriptions. Yet this view is too narrow. When you are giving a presentation to your boss about your latest project or a new business idea and trying to get funding and additional support – this is just as much a selling process as selling life insurance is. And even convincing your girl- or boyfriend to go on a certain weekend trip is a selling process .
This list is based on the book with the same title, which can be bought online here. In the following article I want to give you a quick overview of the mistakes and how to avoid them:

No. 1: Not being obsessed

The solution: Forget about input and how much time you have invested. Focus on the output of your work and maintain a commitment to results all the time.

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