Over the bank holiday weekend, I took a day off and went to the seaside. One of the things that attracted me were the 2p machines in the amusement arcades.  What was really funny was watching the people around me getting so competitive over these machines! They were even leaving their coats over them to ‘guard’ them while they ran across the room to get change.

Now the prizes on offer could have been bought for a pound at the most, but people kept putting in coin after coin, spending far more than the prizes cost, in the hope of winning them.

It got me thinking: how often does that happen in sales?  Sometimes we chase sales and new customers very hard, only to find out if we do manage to convert them they weren’t worth the effort we put in?  This happens for a number of reasons…

We’re competitive and hate to ‘lose’

Most salespeople and business are naturally competitive. This gets far more serious when customers are involved and a ‘deal’ is possible.  Many salespeople I’ve worked with in the past have admitted to dropping prices, increasing what the customer receives or doing whatever it takes to get the order, just to stop it going to a competitor.

Those same people have admitted those customers become the biggest pains to deal with, always wanting something for nothing, and take up the most of their time.

We’ve invested time (and/or money) in the deal

If we’ve been to see the potential client a number of times, or perhaps submitted a quote or proposal, often the salesperson thinks “well, I’ve put so much work into it now, I can’t afford to lose it”. Aside from the implications from a negotiation perspective how do you think this will affect your sales efforts? How quickly do you think the potential client will ‘smell’ your desperation?

We don’t want to say ‘no’

This can be one of the biggest ones, particularly for the small business owner, or the salesperson who is short of new business opportunities.  Let’s face it, most salespeople and small business owners only have enough potential deals in their pipeline that in order for them to hit target, pretty much all of them would need to come off, wouldn’t they?

This causes a huge problem. Because the business owner is concerned how much business (or not) they’ve got coming in, they tend to say yes to deals that they wouldn’t do if they were guaranteed to be busy and profitable.

For the salesperson, this equates to low-profit deals and for the business owner, this equates to work that you wouldn’t normally take on, or wouldn’t choose to do in an ideal world.  Now, I’m not saying that we should start turning lots of work away, particularly when we’re quiet, but we should be aware of what is going on, and what we’re doing about it.

The problem arises when the business owner is not prepared to walk away from a potential deal that may not be the best thing for them, or the potential client.

Andy Preston runs sales training company Outstanding Results