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When I was learning to drive in high school the driving instructors sent all the young student drivers to the school auditorium to watch a series of little horror movies. These movies, which must have dated back to the 1940s, featured teenage carnage and mayhem on the highways. The theme was always some form of “speed kills.”

Speed Can Hurt Us in Sales Too
These types of movies made us laugh (not exactly the intended result) because they were produced in such a cheesy way. The serious point they were trying to drive home to their common-sense-challenged teenage audience interestingly also applies to sales. Speed can kill.

“Customers are frequently like Chinese Finger Traps.”

8 Speed Traps
I have frequently observed the “speed kills” problem in rookie sales professionals, but experienced pro’s aren’t immune either. The following are eight sales tips on how speed can kill sales:

1. As soon as the customer indicates they want to buy something, we promptly write the order, thank them for their business and head out the door or hang up the phone. All opportunities for cross-selling are missed.
2. When we successfully identify a decision maker, we don’t take the time to see if there are other decision makers we should be contacting in the same organization. We could be missing sales from an entire department due to our haste in this area.
3. In our desire to expedite the sales process we don’t make time to ask our customers open ended questions that could provide us with valuable information regarding their needs.
4. Our need for speed can result in insufficient time allocated for relationship building. Relationships take time. All sales professionals know that relationships are the key to high quality long-term customers. This is a frequent topic of this sales blog.
5. While we can influence a customer’s buying timeframe, if we resort to arm-twisting in order to get them to buy more quickly, we risk losing more than just an order.
6. What’s the number one complaint from customers about sales professionals from virtually every study that has ever been done? We don’t listen. When customers perceive that we are rushing, they know we aren’t listening.
7. Human behavior suggests that the more we are pushed, the more we naturally resist. Customers are frequently like Chinese Finger Traps. The harder we try to make them do something (e.g., hurry up), the more they resist.
8. The harder we spur a customer to move faster and place an order, the more desperate we look. Customers don’t like buying from desperate sales professionals.

I could provide more sales tips because there are plenty of additional ways that hurrying customers hurts us in sales. Please see “Further reading” below for related posts from this sales blog.

Sales Blog Epilogue
Am I saying that we don’t need to move fast with customers? No. Am I saying that we shouldn’t make every reasonable effort to close orders faster? No. However, I am saying that rabidly rushing customers in order to make them purchase faster can have many undesirable and unintended consequences.

Further reading:

• Slow Down and Pay Attention During Customer Appointments and Presentations
• Decision Makers, Vertical vs. Horizontal
• The Incredible Importance of Open Ended Questions
• What do I need from a prospect?  Hint: relationship

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Tags: aggressive, closing, cross-selling, listening, questions

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