Mistakes During Your Sales Conversations?

We’ve analyzed over one million B2B sales call recordings to tease out what’s working and what’s not, based on hard data.

We recorded, transcribed, and analyzed the calls using conversation intelligence technology to tease out both patterns of success, and failure.

Of the dozens of mistakes we’ve surfaced, here are the top 13 that blow deals. Don’t be one of the below-quota salespeople who makes these mistakes.

Top 13 Sales Mistakes That Happen During Your Sales Conversation

1. Talking more than 46% of the time
2. Discussing pricing too soon
3. Discussing features and technology instead of business and value
4. Using the sale-killing words
5. Mirroring your buyers
6. Leaving too little time to discuss next steps
7. Asking too few (or too many) questions
8. Asking your questions “checklist style”
9. Pitching rather than conversing
10. Bringing up the competition too late in the cycle
11. Using filler words
12. Giving more than a two-minute company overview
13. Selling alone

1. Talking more than 46% of the time

Let’s begin with talk-to-listen ratios.

Top sales reps talk at most for 46% of a sales call. That means they listen for at least 54% of it. Mid-range performers talk for up to 68% of the time, and the poorest-performing reps aren’t far behind them.

2. Discussing pricing too soon

Don’t talk about pricing in the first third of the sales call. Our data is clear on this one.

Top-performing reps talk pricing way into one-hour sales calls … 38 to 46 minutes in, to be precise. Their counterparts who talk about pricing in the first 15 minutes in blow it big time. Their sales numbers aren’t anywhere near as good. Take the hint. Establish value before talking price.

3. Discussing features and technology instead of business and value

Don’t tell buyers how something works, tell them the results they’re going to get. Spend more time on business value and less on techie and features talk.

Here are two nuggets to encourage you to adopt this approach:

• The most successful reps spend up to 52% more time talking about business value than their poorer-performing peers.
• They spend up to 39% less time talking about features and technical topics than those same peers.

4. Using these 13 sale-killing words

Ever used “we provide” or “it’s on the road map” in a sales call? If you still made the sale, you’re one of the lucky ones because those are sales killers.

You need to stop using them ASAP.

The word “discount” can decrease your chance of a sale by 17%. And saying “absolutely” or “perfect” more than four times on a call drops your chances of a sale by 16%.

Here are the rest of the words you should avoid that we surfaced in the analysis:

• Competitor
• Billion
• Roadmap
• Contract
• Free trial
• Implement/implementation
• Payment
• However
• For example

Bonus stat:

Mentioning your company’s name six or more times on a call drops your chances of success by 19%.

5. Mirroring your buyers

Mirroring is an approval-seeking behavior. It can come across as needy, which is an unattractive quality, especially in sales reps.

Our data shows that sales reps and buyers begin to sync their speech patterns two to three minutes into a call. That includes their rate of speech, the frequency of their pauses, and their use of positive and negative words.

Here’s the surprise …

While average reps mirror their buyers, top reps don’t.

They get the buyer to mirror them.

Check out the graphs below. You’ll see that the top reps led the rate of speech and let the buyer mirror them. That’s how it should be. Stop trying so hard. Be calm and positive and let your charisma bring the buyer into your world.

Notice that “average” reps cater to their buyers:

And notice that successful reps pull buyers into their speech patterns:

6. Leaving too little time to discuss next steps

Winning sales reps devote almost 13% more time at the end of their demos to discussing “next steps.” They use that time to confirm how they’ll move the project forward. That’s critical to confirming buy-in.

Without confirming next steps and buy-in, you’re marketing, not selling.

7. Asking too few (or too many) questions

Think about the discovery part of the call. How do you unpack a buyer’s pain points and business issues? Do you ask enough questions or too many? What’s the right number?

As a general rule, the more questions you ask, the better. Average reps ask 6.3 questions and top performers ask 10 to 14 … and they also dig deeper and listen more. But be careful! There’s a diminishing rate of return. After 14 questions, your sales rate heads back down toward average.

8. Asking your questions “checklist style”

Don’t grill your buyer with rapid-fire questions. They’ll think you’re going through a checklist without listening to their problems.

Spread your questions throughout the conversation in a balanced, natural way. If you ask all your questions at the beginning of the call, you’ll sound scripted and impersonal. That’s the opposite of the vibe you want to create.

The graphs below shows that average performers ask lots of questions at the start of a call. Top salespeople insert them evenly throughout the conversation.