10 Bad B2B Sales Habits That You Need to Break

No two B2B sales reps use the same approach when reaching out to prospects and pitching their company's products or services. Unfortunately, some sales reps are guilty of making one or more mistakes with their approach, resulting in few or no sales. To prevent this from happening to you, you should avoid the following B2B sales habits.

#1) Accepting 'No'

Don't give up on a prospect just because he or she rejects your offer. Even if a prospect initially rejects your offer, he or she may still convert into a paying customer. The only way you'll know, however, is by following up with him or her. After waiting a little while, call back the prospect with a value proposition of your product or service. With the right approach and a little luck, you can turn this rejection into a sale.

#2) Only Cold Calling Prospects

There's nothing wrong with cold calling prospects with an offer, but you should diversify your sales outreach strategy with other tactics like warm calling, emailing and social media networking. Research shows that just 1% of cold calls convert into a sale, meaning you'll have to make 100 cold calls to generate a single sale.

Cold calling is a great tool, and a unique and important skill to maintain. Use your calling skills to call identified project, industrial or office, opportunities from Salesleads. If you sell to the industrial or office industries, get identified projects where you now know what projects they are working on. You’ll also be able to call the project owner and other contacts with the direct phone number and email address.

#3) Using the Same Message for All Prospects

Countless B2B sales reps are guilty of making this mistake. Rather than creating customized messages for prospects, they use the same generic message. While this may yield some sales, it's an ineffective strategy that will consume a significant amount of time and resources. A better approach is to create buyer personas of your ideal audience, after which you can create a customized message for each persona. Why is this important? Well, nearly three-fourths of marketers say personalized messages increases customer engagement. And when customers are engaged, they'll usually spend more money.

But remember, buyers are smart. They can tell when it’s a ‘canned’ script and when it’s genuine. So, mix it up. You’ll have more fun, and so will the prospect.

#4) Spending Too Much Time With Email

Don't get me wrong: Email remains an effective marketing channel on which you can reach new prospects and engage with your existing prospects and customers. However, you should be conscious of how much time you spend checking your inbox. According to research cited by Huffington Post, U.S. workers spend an average of 3.2 hours each day checking their email -- and that's only for work-related purposes. When adding personal email time, the number increases a whopping 6.3 hours.

#5) Lack of Clear Goals

It's important that you set clear, detailed goals for your B2B sales strategy. Generic goals like "generate more sales" or "attract more leads" isn't going to cut it. You must be clear and concise. Otherwise, you won't know whether or not you've achieved these goals. An example of a specific goal is "generate 20 additional sales each month" or "increase customer retention by 10%."

Another great goal is to check your email daily for “New project Alerts’ from Salesleads. It alerts you to a new project, both industrial and office, that has been posted. Now you have a new opportunity to work on which helps you achieve your additional sales goal!

#6) Untimely Responses

Time is of the essence in B2B sales. The longer you wait to respond to a prospect, the greater the chance that he or she will choose a different company with whom to do business. When a prospect contacts you inquiring about your product or service, respond as soon as possible. Whether the prospect reaches out to you via phone, email, online chat, etc., you should respond ASAP to increase your chances of scoring a sale.

#7) Not Allowing Prospects to Speak

Another all-too-common sales habit is failing to allow prospects to speak. When a sales rep contacts a prospect, he or she may talk the entire time without giving the prospect an opportunity to talk. And in doing so, the prospect isn't able to voice his or her concerns, thereby hurting the sales rep's chances at converting the prospect into a customer. The bottom line is that you need to create a two-way conversation with prospects, allowing prospects to speak and voice their concerns.

#8) Not Using Data Analytics

With digital marketing and sales channels on the rise, sales reps should take advantage of data analytics to improve their conversion rate and close more sales. With data analytics, you can gather key information on prospects that can be used to create better, more effective sales messages.

Try this out. Get a trial for our office identified projects or industrial identified projects. You’ll notice there are notes included on the project. It’s generated lots of questions that you need answered in order to further qualify the project. Perfect! Now call the prospect and let them know you’re calling about the project, and start right away with asking questions. When the timing is right, the prospect will ask where you are from and what you do. Now you got both of their ears listening to your story. 

#9) Using a Single Channel

Of course, it's also important that you use multiple sales channels to promote your company's products or services. Even if a channel yields sales, there are probably other channels that can drive sales as well. The only way you'll know, however, is by testing them. So, use multiple channels to contact prospects with your sales offer.

#10) Poor Time Management Skills

Finally, poor time management skills is a bad sales habit that all B2B sales reps need to break. You only have so much time available in a typical day, and you must use that time efficiently to generate the most sales possible. If you struggle with time management, try using a productivity app and creating to-do lists.