Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently

Chapter 9Insight Selling Mistakes

Too many sellers have a canned pitch and just go through their mental checklist like selling robots. “Here’s why we’re great, here’s how we’re going to help you, here are other people that we do this for that are in your industry.” They’re just hoping that something they throw at the wall sticks. Then they just don’t listen. They’re not having a conversation with the intended customer or client.

The other thing I see are sellers trying to educate the prospect from the moment they walk in, but it’s like they throw an entire textbook at the prospect when they may only be interested in one chapter. If you throw 50 points at them, they will tune you out. Instead, do some research on what you know is likely to be important to them; then start a conversation about why they agreed to meet and what some of the pain points are, then pick two or three salient points and talk about why these, specifically, apply to them and will help them run their business.

—Jeff Somers, principal, Rothstein Kass

In our What Sales Winners Do Differently research, “helped me avoid potential pitfalls” of implementation was the sixth greatest factor separating winners from second-place finishers. In this chapter, our goal is to do the same for you.

It’s not our intent, however, to present a laundry list of all selling mistakes. The focus is specifically on the concepts and application of insight selling. Some points are tactical, and some are strategic. Some we cover elsewhere ...