7 Things You Shouldn't Do as a Young BD/Sales

Since starting my own business after graduation, I have been working in the field of Business Development (BD)/Sales for 8 years. After my own company closed, I also began leading BD/Sales teams at various startups. As my experience and team grew, I started mentoring many young salespeople. My role has evolved from being the one communicating with clients to overseeing others' BD/Sales as they communicate with clients.

With more time as I am no longer the main speaker in the conference room, I have had the opportunity to observe these young salespeople and see what mistakes they may be making in their communications with clients. This is why I want to write about the five mistakes I used to make when communicating as a salesperson and encourage younger salespeople to reflect on whether they may be making these mistakes in their work.

Mistake #1: Relying Solely on "Talking" in Sales

During interviews, 95% of young salespeople applying for a job are able to talk confidently. It is no surprise. Because if you can't even speak clearly, how can you be trusted to represent the company and "talk" sales to clients? However, the ability to "talk" is just a basic skill for a salesperson. The key to transforming from a beginner to an experienced salesperson is learning how to "listen" and "observe" what clients are saying. 

We have all heard the mysterious phrase from business lectures: "To create demand, you have to have the chance to sell to the client." In fact, for a salesperson, demand cannot be created out of thin air; it must be mined from the client.

In the sales process, prospecting is the most difficult task. "Client is never interested in your company, but rather what problems your service/product can solve for them." A competent salesperson can always use a few simple words to tell the other person "what problem you can solve for them" as a "door knocker" to schedule a meeting for the first visit.

Everyone is busy, and clients have no need to set aside time to visit with a salesperson in who they are not interested. When a client is willing to see you, it means that there is at least one thing they are interested in based on your "door knocker." Your job at the meeting is to dig that interest out. The biggest mistake made by many beginner salespeople is to start "presenting" their proposal as soon as the meeting starts, without understanding why the client is "interested" in meeting with them.

During the meeting, I always briefly talk about the "door-knocking" that led to the meeting, then give pause and the client will start asking questions about what he or she wants to know. At this time, what you should do is carefully observe and listen to the "problems" that the client raises, which is where their "interest" in your product/service lies. Even if it doesn't succeed at that time, at least you'll know what the other party cares about and help you record when you should re-contact this client in the future.

For a salesperson, "demand" cannot be created out of thin air, but rather, it must be unearthed by asking questions.

"It shows my previous foolish appearance when negotiating cooperation, only focusing on my own content and not paying attention to the client's expressions and reactions."

Mistake #2: Presenting at Your Own Pace.

"We'll get to that later" is a phrase I hate to hear in sales. Imagine watching a complex movie for the first time and encountering a confusing plot point. You would immediately divert your attention to try and figure it out, inadvertently missing the next few minutes of the plot. The same thing happens when a client is listening to your presentation and encounters something they don't understand. If you tell them to "wait" until later to explain, they will either be stuck in a state of mental gridlock, waiting for you to get to that point to clarify, or they will give up on understanding your logic and hope it becomes clearer later. As a salesperson, are either of these outcomes what you want?

When a salesperson is invited by a client to give a presentation, the purpose is to address the client's doubts. Your presentation is just a lure to get the client to ask questions. Since the client has already raised doubts, we should not insist on finishing the presentation. Many young salespeople value their "speech rhythm" and don't like being interrupted by client questions, but you'll find that the more questions a client raises during your presentation, the more interested they are in your service, so they have more questions.

Then, not every client will be interested in raising their hand to ask questions. Therefore, you must treat them like babies, observing their expressions and reactions carefully after each word you speak, to determine when to stop and let them think when to stop and let them ask questions to match their thinking speed and guide them to ask more questions. When I was still a young salesperson, the biggest mistake I made was wanting to quickly finish the proposal and let the client ask questions. But in fact, when you start to speed up and the other party encounters something incomprehensible, they will start to "mute" you in their head and look forward to the end of the time for you to spit. 

So when a client asks a question that you just talked about, you can't blame the client, you can only blame yourself who insisted on their own pace.

"The content of the presentation is to help us assist in the explanation, not to have us follow along with the explanation. Absolutely do not report according to your own pace."

Mistake #3: Giving a Complete Proposal to the Client.

Don't misunderstand my meaning - I'm not saying that salespeople can just throw proposals at clients and see what sticks. What I mean is that you need to give clients the feeling that they have "choices."

Imagine each collaboration as a puzzle. If you only offer a protruding piece, that means they can only connect with you on the recessed side. Giving clients a very complete and detailed proposal sends the message that "you have to accept it 100% or leave it," unless you have a 100% understanding and control of the client. This is the main reason why most salespeople are rejected.

"People CAN NOT be convinced. They can only be accepted if they already had the idea themselves." No client would agree to a salesperson's request if they never had that thought. As a salesperson, your job is to induce the client to "have" the idea you want, not force them to accept your proposal. While this may be flexible in BD, in the more standardized job of Sales, you can at least let the other party participate in the "decision" process.

It's important to offer "at least" two options for the client to choose from in every proposal. When given the choice between A and B, the brain tends to consider which one is better and overlooks the option to completely reject the proposal. If the product/service/plan you are offering doesn't have much room for choice, you can try creating a "fake option B" as a lure. This option should be significantly worse than option A in terms of conditions and content, making option A seem like the better choice. This is what we want: to make the client feel like they have a choice and that their choice completes the proposal.

"The picture above shows the classic fable called "朝三暮四 (Get 3 for breakfast and get 4 for dinner)".' The concept is that a shepherd wants to reduce the number of bananas given to the monkey to seven a day. His strategy is to let the monkey choose how many to have in the morning and how many in the afternoon. Because the monkey has the opportunity to choose, it ignores the fact that its bananas are being reduced."

Mistake #4: Holding a Long Meeting with your Clients. 

I have never been able to maintain complete focus in a meeting that lasted more than 60 minutes, nor do I think it is possible to remember every single thing that was said in a meeting that long.

Most clients want to meet with us for the purpose of gathering more information. They only want to receive information that is relevant to making a decision. Of the information that is relevant, 20% comes from your presentation and 80% comes from the answers you give to their questions. If they just want to look at a presentation or send an email to ask questions, why would they call you in?

The most important thing in a successful meeting is to give the client as much time as possible to ask questions and to keep your own talking and responses as short as possible. The value of a meeting for a salesperson is to obtain the client's "needs," and for the client, the value is to obtain the salesperson's "answers." If you can adhere to this principle, I guarantee that the meeting will usually not exceed 30 minutes or at most one hour. In my 8 years of experience, I have not encountered a client who can constantly ask questions for more than an hour. Therefore, if your meeting lasts more than 60 minutes, it means that as a salesperson, you have too much unnecessary talking.

Another point is the follow-up items after the meeting. They should be kept to a maximum of three per meeting and the simpler the better. Imagine you meet a salesperson selling a pressure cooker at the market and you are slightly interested in buying it. It is not easy to get you to move, but he asks you to go home and check if your voltage, kitchen space, brush sponge, and credit card limit are sufficient before coming back to him to buy the pressure cooker. Just thinking about it makes you tired, so how can you agree to the proposal?

A meeting that goes smoothly is a rare occurrence. Smart salespeople simplify things for customers and know how to control the "scope" of each meeting so that follow-up items do not extend indefinitely.

"It's a real experience to proof "over 60 minutes of a meeting" is really hard to keep people awake."

Mistake #5: Following the Order that you Prepared When you are Presenting.

Don't be naive, nobody cares about the order in which you prepared your presentation.

Although I opened an online course on presentation and proposal persuasion last year "Five-Phase Proposal Induction Technique" (this is a Chinese course), more than 50% of the cooperation cases I closed were done without opening the presentation. Because when the pre-meeting slide deck is simple and easy to understand, the client already knows what the meeting is about.

"Sending the slide deck beforehand is the duty of the salesperson, and looking at it beforehand is the virtue of the client." We can't guarantee that the client will always read our slide deck beforehand, so you should always follow up after sending the proposal and bring your own slide deck with you in case the client is lazy and hasn't read the content beforehand.

Many young salespeople have the bad habit of starting their presentation as soon as they enter a meeting, which is actually a very bad habit because they are wasting time for clients who have already seen the presentation. You can try putting a full black background on the first page of the presentation, and once you start chatting if you find that the other person doesn't actually understand the content of the meeting to be discussed, then smoothly move on to the presentation and start sharing, which will not only prevent the other person from feeling embarrassed but also won't waste each other's time.

If you really need to use the presentation, it's also because verbal descriptions don't have visuals, so you can use the presentation as a visual "assistant" for explaining things. For example, what the content of our cooperation will look like, how many steps this complex process should have, etc. This "assistant" should help you speak more smoothly and logically, not burden you with the task of describing the content yourself.

If you often need to look at the next page of the presentation to decide what to say next, you should reconsider the order of your presentation. A real presentation should be a tool that helps you, not something that you serve as a sidekick for.

"Before going out for a meeting, we used to draw out the organizational chart of the other party and understand what different content to speak to different people."

Mistake #6: Making the Client Follow Up with You After the Meeting.

It is your responsibility to follow up, not your client's. If your product is really that good and "interested clients will take their own next steps," then the company should fire you because they don't need a salesperson to sell it.

After a meeting with a client, it is a necessary step to provide information and do homework. Businesses should send out a follow-up report as soon as possible after a meeting. According to my experience, the probability of a client continuing to respond to you decreases steadily by 30% after one day if the follow-up report is not sent out on the same day as the meeting. If you are worried about not being able to send the follow-up report quickly, you should consider finding a partner salesperson or keeping a pre-written draft in your email folder at all times.

Don't be foolish, not every client will be willing to do their homework. When working with larger companies, you will need to put in more effort, because the better the homework you do before reaching the "key decision maker," the more likely your work will be presented to them. Therefore, when preparing post-meeting materials, consider how to best present them to the decision-maker. If the deal is important enough, I am willing to do the homework for my contact to ensure that my proposal is presented as accurately as possible to the key decision-maker. 

"Providing a presentation before the meeting helps your contact invite the right people to the meeting; providing materials after the meeting helps your contact write out the content they want to present upwards." In large deals, the real determining factor for success is post-meeting homework. As a salesperson looking to close a deal, don't rely on others to do the homework for you.

"After every meeting, I would sit outside the client's office and send a follow-up email."

Mistake #7: Partner an Easy-to-Partner Collaboration/Sell Easy-to-Sell Products. 

As a current business professional, have probably encountered some form of sales work in your career. Have you ever worried that your expertise might one day be replaced?

As a former product manager, I believe that when a product is good, clients will come to you. But as the head of a sales team, the value of sales lies in promoting the benefits of that product to more clients and gathering more feedback to help product planners make better products. So complaining that the product is not good enough to sell is a big mistake for a salesperson. Because as the product gets better, the role of the salesperson becomes less necessary.

With the development of modern technology, there are more and more tools to help teams make products/services better. I clearly understand that if I cannot promote a product when it is not good enough, I will soon be one of the first to be eliminated in the wave of changing times. It is precise because sales are not easy and the value of a salesperson is high, and we can continue to have a place in the job market.

If you have been working in sales for a while and feel that your performance has not improved significantly. I hope that by reading this article, you can check whether you have made any of these mistakes. After all, you have put in so much effort, and trying a little more does not seem to hurt. 

If you are interested in the theories and ideas mentioned in this article and want to learn more, you are welcome to click on the link below to try my online course for free: "Five-Phase Proposal Induction Technique" Chapter 1 (this is a Chinese course). You can also continue to follow this blog, where I will regularly upload new articles and perspectives that I hope will be helpful to you as you work in sales.

"The picture above shows the most difficult cooperation in my life and my partner's life, and also the most shining page in our resume."

Wish every BD/Salesperson who reads this article will always understand the value they bring to their work.