3 Behavioural Traits That Show You Suck At Selling High Ticket

I’ve trained and coached hundreds of sales people during my sales career and I always find that the greater their sales experience is, the harder it is to train them. This is because in most cases, they’ve developed ‘sales sabotaging habits’ which they aren’t even aware of.

While it’s always harder to unlearn existing habits than to teach new ones, it doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Sometimes bringing awareness to problems is all that’s needed to start changing the way you do something. In this blog post, I cover 3 key behavioural traits that are sabotaging your sales results — and you probably aren’t even aware of them!

You’re Submissive To The Prospect

One of the best pieces of advice I was given by one of my mentors is that the prospect you have to work the hardest for is also the one that’s most unlikely to close. We’ve all heard the adage ‘people buy people’ which basically suggests prospects buy because the salesperson developed an emotional connection with the prospect. Here’s some shocking news — this isn’t technically true!

Sales people who believe this tend to fall prey to submissiveness — meaning they end up spending ages answering the endless list of questions about their service or product, without ever getting any closer to the sale. I always know when a salesperson in my team hasn’t had a good sales call when they forward me an email with a reel of questions from the prospect.

For example, one of my clients was selling certified training courses and had a difficult prospect on a sales call. No matter how many questions he answered, there was always one further hoop to jump through. After an extensive email exchange, his sale hinged on answering the ‘last and final question’:

‘What grade of paper will my certificate be printed on?’

Guess what? She never bought the course! While this may seem like an extreme example, the principle behind it is very simple. Most sales people fall into the ‘constant questions’ trap to varying degrees. If you’ve ever experienced this, you need to remember you work in sales and not in hospitality. Your role as a sales person is not one of buyer and server; rather it’s one of buyer and seller which means between two equal parties.

You Talk More Than The Prospect

I’ve lost count of the number of times sales people have been told they’ve got the ‘gift of the gab’. Believe it or not, it’s actually one of the LEAST persuasive qualities a salesperson can ever have. Put it this way, if a prospect is subjected to constant talking and then ends up buying, you can be sure it’s because they no longer want to hear the drowning of your voice.

Given the first opportunity, they’ll cancel as soon as they can during the ’14 day cooling off period’. Talking the ears of your prospect is one of the worst ways to do a sales call. So how do you know if you’re talking too much? By listening to your own recorded sales calls. You’ll be surprised and shocked at how much you talk during the call itself.

One of my routines with my clients is to randomly stop sales call recordings and see who was doing the talking. I can usually gauge within minutes who has the ‘gift of the gab’ and who needs additional help with improving their ability to sell.

For example, one of my clients had a team of salespeople who needed help with improving their closing rate. One particular salesperson was having a poor month, so I randomly stopped their sales recording several times during the 45 min audio… and not surprisingly, every time I paused the recording, I could always hear him doing the speaking.

Poor sales people prefer to talk because it’s easier to talk than to think. Talking excessively means they aren’t confident in their ability to sell. When I listen to sales recordings at length, 100% of the time I’ll hear salespeople reel off an endless list of features and benefits. They love to talk about the product or service because it’s comfortable and rehearsed.

However, authentic selling is one that connects with the prospect. It happens within unscripted territory, within the exploration of the unknown.

A close has to be discovered within the mind of the prospect not in the mind of the sales person. The continuous chit chat by the salesperson is simply a way to mask their inability to navigate within the unknown territory of conversation. In short, poor sales people talk more and listen less, while highly skilled sales people talk less and listen more.

The Sale Means More To You Than It Means To The Prospect

What worked in selling 10 years ago doesn’t work today. You’ve watched in the movies, you’ve experienced it yourself. Gone are the days when sheer enthusiasm and ‘convincing’ can persuade a prospect to buy.

The reality is buyers have evolved. They are far more sophisticated now than they ever were. Prospects are no longer blindsided by hype. With a simple Google search, they can research anything within seconds.

In short, prospects have developed their internal sales radar and can easily detect when they’re being sold to.

The excited chatter of a salesperson is instantly picked up as being inauthentic by your prospect’s subconscious mind. The net result triggers an ‘auto response of guarded behaviour’ on the part of the prospect towards the salesperson. The truth is, most people get on a call thinking ‘this person just wants my money’ — and this means they’ve already decided they aren’t interested.

Like any skill, selling needs to adapt to the NEW reality of a smarter, more sophisticated audience — otherwise selling becomes redundant and even counterproductive. What’s interesting is that while marketing methods constantly evolve, sales have not. Salespeople sadly still rely on old fashioned and outdated methods of trying to close prospective customers — and prospects can see right through it.

Selling authentically requires a NEW approach; one that treats prospects with the respect they deserve. And this is exactly what I teach inside my 5 step Inverse Selling System™.

My Inverse Selling System™ works on the principle of ‘Dynamic Behaviour Shifting’, which means selling is about changing your prospect’s behaviour and NOT trying to convince them of the benefits of your product — an outdated sales approach that produces mediocre results at best.

Buying therefore becomes the natural conclusion and by-product of the sales process. Dynamic Behavioural Shifting is so successful that not only will clients close themselves, they’ll even thank you for helping them!

Adam Cerra

Creator of the Inverse selling system™

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