7 Things to Avoid If You Want to Be a Superstar Salesperson

Be sure to register for my free training on, "Why Prospects Push Back on Price, Give 'Think-It-Overs,' and Ghost in Sales Until They Meet a Sales Superstar Who Is Following These 7 Simple Keys" https://salesinsightslab.com/training/

1. Pitching.

Prospects are used to getting pitched all the time by average salespeople. This is why superstar salespeople do the complete opposite. They never pitch. If you want to become a superstar salesperson, lose the word “pitch” from your vocabulary...and never pitch again.

2. “What keeps you up at night?”

Superstar salespeople never start sales conversations with generic, vague questions. They know that their prospects will immediately shut down—just like they would if they were being pitched. Your prospects need to see real value from you before they're willing to answer questions.

3. Probing.

When salespeople ask random questions from all different angles just to see where the conversation goes, not only do they muddle the direction of the conversation, but they also lose the prospect’s attention. Superstar salespeople have a systematic set of questions that purposefully take the conversation in a certain direction. And this does not involve probing.

4. BANT.

You may have never heard of BANT, but I hear it a lot in my community. People ask me all the time, "Should I try the BANT method?” BANT stands for budget, authority, need, timeline. And it's a really cool sounding acronym. Unfortunately, it’s also a ludicrous sales process.

It makes no sense to start up a conversation by talking about budget, and then authority, which refers to the decision-making process. BANT basically says you should open your sales conversation with, "Hey, do you have any money?" and then move right onto, "Are you the decision maker?" before following up with, "Oh, by the way, do you have any need for what we have?" And then lastly, "So what's the timeline for making a decision?" The entire process is truly absurd in terms of the natural flow of a sales conversation.

5. Be their friend.

In order to be a superstar salesperson, you must be laser-focused on the business conversation. Don’t get distracted by this idea of building relationships or becoming long-term buddies with your prospects. These are not people who are going to come to your wedding, or your kid's bar mitzvah. That's not what matters. What’s more, the less you’re concerned about whether the prospect likes you, the more likely that prospect is to want to buy from you.

6. Hard close.

In traditional selling, it's all about going for the close. If you talk to an old-school sales manager or someone who's been in sales for a long time, they might ask you, "So what's your closing question? How are you going to close that deal?" But the reality is that sales is not about the close. It's about the process that leads to it.

If your prospects see tremendous value in what you have to offer, and you've taken them through a strong sales process, the close is going to come naturally. If you're focused on that hard close at the end, you're going to get a big, fat think-it-over, or they're going to ghost on you. Hard closes make prospects feel pressure...and people don't like to feel pressure. The way they respond to pressure is typically just squirming their way out of the situation however they can.

Superstar salespeople don’t go for a hard close. Instead, they take their prospects through a process that ultimately leads to a decision of either yes or no—and either way, that's okay.

7. Discount.

Superstar salespeople literally get nauseous at the idea of discounting. Average and bottom-performing salespeople are willing to give discounts all day long. If you’re trying to discount in order to close sales, you’re in trouble. That is not top-performing behavior.

In order to be a superstar salesperson, you’ve got to be focused on the value that you’re bringing to the table. Now, I'm not saying that prospects don't ask for discounts from superstars. Of course, that happens. But superstar salespeople do not discount their offerings. It's not about the price. It's about understanding the prospect's challenges, the value of those challenges, and the value of solving those challenges. If your offering is in alignment with the value of solving those challenges, there is no need for a discount.

Rather than focusing on discounts, focus on the value that your offering will bring to the life of your prospects.