Mistakes Made in Sales Calls: What You Can Learn

--Dan Fogelberg

As a sales, marketing and Public Relations professional with 20+ years' experience making sales calls, I've seen good and bad efforts at making pitches, presentations and sales calls.

But even if things go badly, you can benefit from the experience. What follows is one example of a misguided sales call in which the presenter ignored vital instructions from the client. When a client gives you specific instructions on what they will and will not do to promote their product, it certainly pays to listen. A sales call is first and foremost your opportunity to relate that you've heard what your client's priorities really are.

Here's how not to proceed.

In planning for a sales call with the Public Relations agency for a rapidly-expanding doughnut chain with plans to expand in our market, our newspaper's circulation promotions manager ignored key instructions in the account's creative brief: "We do not discount our product under any circumstance," the brief clearly stated.

The circulation manager was so excited about possibilities for single copy sales that they ignored the creative brief and contrived a set of in-store promotions involving price reductions on doughnuts if customers purchased copies of our newspaper at their stores. "Look," I warned the circulation department. "They specifically said no product discounts."

"Oh, those are just guidelines," the circulation manager responded. "They'll love what we have to show them. It's worked everyone I've been."

"You're making a big mistake," I warned.

We met with the promotions agency for the doughnut company. Their account executive stopped the presentation after only 5 minutes. "Did you not even read the creative brief I sent you? It specifically says no product discounts!"

"Uhh, we thought you'd still like to see these ideas," the circulation manager maintained.

'No, we don't," the account executive shot back. "You're wasting our time. This meeting is over." And with that she got up to leave the room.

I jumped in to request an opportunity to come back with a different set of promotions. The account executive grudgingly agreed. This time around our advertising department handled the presentation and put together a program that respected the creative brief. They also offered a few trade ads as compensation for blowing the presentation the first time. We sealed the deal and won a few opportunities for the circulation department as well.

The lesson learned is that paying attention to client instructions really does matter. Doing your homework and coming to an internal agreement on strategy is key for any company hoping to win a sale. Never let your own objectives supercede the needs and objectives of the client you are pitching. The most successful opening line in a sales call is often, "What can we do to help you?" From there, you are often talking about things you can accomplish together rather than "what can you do for me?"

The circulation department assumed their priorities offered a better business model than the best practices of the doughnut company. In short, we tried to sell them the "hole in the doughnut" rather than the doughnut itself, and came up empty on the first try.