Is overselling your culprit?

Posted by Abhishek Kumar on November 9th, 2018

Every profession has its own kind of pressure upon the individual. And every individual has their own coping mechanisms. Sales is not devoid of pressure, but, in fact, known to be the most taxing profession. And it is not uncommon to see salespeople forgetting to draw the line and put a ‘hard-stop’ while trying to sell their product or service. This going beyond the line to sell, actually, sometimes might turn-off your prospect and might be the primary reason your company is going low on sales. Such cases might be reduced if your salespeople go through one of the good sales and marketing courses conducted by reputed organizations that are involved in sales training in Bangalore.

The sales professionals have regular high demands in terms of achieving extremely high targets while also delivering to the client expectations and keeping them satisfied. So, over-enthusiastic salesperson might at times try to oversell that could result in the deal slipping out. Once it so happened when I was at a shop to purchase a product, and in fact at the final point of payment, the sales boy just said, “Sir, this is a great product you are purchasing. You wanted it to do X and Y but it will also help you with A and B kind of jobs.” And I just paused, thinking, “Why would I buy it at the said price when I would use only half of the qualities of the product?”

And this is just one angle to the overselling thing! Your client might also think, in future too, that whether they are paying too much for the product specification. And whether there are additional functionalities attached that they might not need. This might even appear as a trust issue leading to new problem situations.

Therefore, as a salesperson you have to first find out the needs of the client. Sometimes the client might also not be sure of what exactly do they need and this is where skilled salespeople are capable of rescuing. They can help people gain clarity about their requirements. And once this clarity is arrived at it becomes easier to offer the right kind of product.

Probing skills play significant part here as the salesperson is expected to ask deeper questions. Often, clients have different expectations at the superficial level. But when probed further a salesperson is able to diagnose the right way to meet their needs. “What do you mean when you say ,……..?”, “Is that really important?”, “How important is the feature on a scale of 1 to 10?”, “How do you see that when compared to the price reaching to……?”

Finally, be aware that your product might not meet all client needs. And, in such circumstances, it would be better to let go the deal than to oversell on the current specifications. The same client might return when they find that your product was better ‘overall’. But, if irritated by your overselling efforts, in any case, these clients will never return to you.

Sales plays critical role in any business and skilled sales professionals are always looked as drivers of business. This is the reason employees choose to take up any of the sales and marketing courses running in various locations. To avoid their employees overselling and improve their skills, it is often better that the corporate houses might also hire any organization offering sales training in Bangalore or elsewhere in the country.