5 Bad Sales Tactics That Will Hurt Your Business (they’re super common!)
There’s a lot of bad selling advice out there.
Like, reeeeally bad.
The kind of bad selling advice that can actually hurt your business instead of helping it.
I want to make sure you know that you don’t have to do these things, and I want to make sure you know that you can stop doing these bad selling practices, even if someone else out there has led you to believe that this is how to do business.
So here are 5 really bad selling practices I commonly see being taught, and why you reeeeally shouldn’t do them.
#1 Don’t Randomly DM
We’ve all experienced that random Facebook message or Instagram DM pitching you with no basis of any kind of relationship. It’s just a cold and irrelevant pitch.
Yep. I’m talking about the infamous “Hey girl” DMs.
This happens to me all the time on Instagram and it drives me bananas.
But it can also happen with people who you technically know but haven’t connected with in ages. And then just one day out of the blue, they send you a message telling you about their “opportunity.” Why do you think I'm just suddenly going to be on board with whatever you are selling?!
It’s the most common and one of the worst offenders of all the bad sales tactics.
Don't do this.
When you've opted in to get emails from someone, yes they send you information about promos and things like that. Yes they do paid advertising. That’s totally different. But Target doesn't have their cashiers send you a random DM to say, “Why don't you come in and shop our sale?”
It’s weird. It doesn’t work. Don’t do it.
Especially if you think that you're supposed to or somebody is telling you that you need to in order to succeed. That’s a lie. It's not going to be worth your time and your energy
#2 Don’t Co-opt Someone Else’s Platform
There’s a related tactic I’ve seen pop up in Facebook groups, even curated ones like my (now archived) group.
It’s the random, uninvited sales post.
There are some groups out there, especially for entrepreneurs, that will allow you to post your pitches and that is completely fine. This can be a great access point.
And there are other groups, like mine, where posting and asking for feedback or celebrating a win is the whole point! I’m always happy about this!
But what I’m seeing are longform posts that are a veiled sell. It’s usually a picture of the person with a whole random story and ends with a call-to-action of “type hell yes if you agree!” or whatever.
And it's very strange to me.
Because when you think of it in terms of the real world, a Facebook group is a lot like an in-person networking space.
So if you were at a networking event, chatting with some other folks, and then all of a sudden, somebody just walks right up to your little group, and just starts into some weird story that has nothing to do with what you're talking about. It's like not tethered to anything at the moment. You would be like, “I'm sorry, Susan, what are you doing? Why are you just suddenly giving us this weird play-by-play of something that happened to you? We were over here talking about good restaurants to eat at in town and then suddenly you're off on this tangent with this very self-absorbed weird story.”
We'd probably want to roll our eyes.
And again, it's not to say, “Don’t post anything inspiring”. But even if you're not familiar with this, and you're in like larger entrepreneurial groups, pay attention and see if you now notice what I'm talking about. They're literally posts that are apropos of nothing else. And clearly it's a way for that person to put themselves out there so that you notice them.
As somebody who runs a Facebook group, I am all for community over competition. And I am very much an abundant-mindset versus lack-mindset person. I don't feel threatened by the competition. There are a lot of people who do something similar to what I do!
But I don't want to take advantage of a group that somebody else has taken the time and the energy to curate and to grow and to make available for people, and I don’t want someone else to do it to my group.
Now, on the flip side, if I'm in a group and somebody tags me in a question because they know I might have an answer… that’s different. I'm happy to hop in and help.
Same thing in my own group; if someone is saying it’s hard to get work done because my 18 month old stopped napping, I’m thrilled my previous client who is a sleep coach for families jumps in! I have no problem with people promoting themselves and their expertise in that way.
It just feels very weird and sleazy to me to take advantage of something that another entrepreneur has created as a way to advertise yourself and your own business, especially when it's pretending to not be selling.
#3 Don’t Make It About You
Selling is actually not about you. It’s about them.
So it's totally okay to give people social proof about yourself. You can talk about whatever your expertise is. But at the end of the day, they don't care about what is in it for you; they care about what is in it for them.
So when you’re having a sales conversation or creating sales content, spend more time focused on how your product or service is going to benefit them.
Even something like quirky coffee mugs works like this!
At first you might think, what the heck is the benefit of a coffee mug?
But somebody might want to start their day with a little bit of humor! Maybe they have a bunch of kids and they're running a business from home and life is chaotic, and that fun mug during their 15 minutes of solitude in the morning is a great way for them to start the day. That is a benefit unto itself!
Also: don’t assume you know their problem!
This is all over the place in “wellness”: wellness products, skincare, weight loss, anything like that. Not every fat person wants to lose weight. Not everyone with wrinkles feels bad about them.
So when people reach out with their unsolicited opinion in an effort to try to sell something, it’s gross.
It’s very MLM-y.
We see a lot of people in MLM direct sales/network marketing do this, we think “Oh this is what selling is! So I suppose that because I'm a fitness coach, that this is how I need to sell my services by approaching people who don't appear to be fit and then seeing if they're interested.”
Wrong on so many levels.
Can you imagine how shitty it would feel to get a DM from somebody you barely know saying, “You look like you've gained some weight. And bikini season is right around the corner. Do you want to talk about the services that I can provide?”
No. Ugh.
Focus on the benefits to the other person. But don't make assumptions that just because they seem some sort of way that they are automatically going to be needing or wanting what you have.
#4 Don’t Disrespect a “No”
It's totally okay to just let people say no or “Not now.” Allow people to decline.
Sometimes when people are declining or they seem wishy washy, what might be happening is that they may not feel like they have all of the information to make a strong yes.
Maybe there's something else that they are unsure of that you can clarify for them before they can make a definitive decision one way or the other.
And sometimes people need to sleep on a decision.
And that’s okay.
Let’s say someone is hiring a coach. They might want to interview several different people before they decide who they feel comfortable working with. And that is okay, people deserve to be able to do that.
I will say, you know, if you've checked with them and they give permission, you can follow up at a future point. A lot of times, it might take somebody months of following along with you, before they actually feel comfortable or ready to buy from you. I know that my first mentor when I started this business, I was actually following along with her for probably a couple of years before I actually hired her. And that's okay!
So just because somebody says “not now”, it doesn't mean “not ever.”
Give people the dignity of just being able to say no without guilt.
If you make them feel bad about saying “no” or “not now”, then they might never want to come do business with you.
#5 Don’t Shame People
At the end of the day, we all get to make decisions about what we want to spend our money on.
Even if someone is a gajillionaire, they are allowed to say, “I don’t want to spend money on that.”
It might be more than they are comfortable spending on that particular item, they might not be impressed with that item, they might not feel like they need that item. There could be any number of reasons they say no to spending money on something!
What you absolutely shouldn’t do is shame them for that decision.
It's never okay to shame someone for not spending money with you. It’s just flat out gross. It’s the worst offender, the pinnacle of the worst in selling and sales behaviors.
How I’ve seen this show up:
“If you don't invest in this now, you're going to fail”
“You obviously don't care about the success of your business.”
Even if somebody hasn't said something like this to us directly, we've all seen the fear- and shame-based marketing out there, and it just doesn't feel good.
So just because you see other people do it, please don't feel like you need to do it as well.
Because it doesn’t work.
Shaming is not a great way to start or maintain a relationship.
I'm a big advocate of relational selling. If I was to feel shamed for not making an investment, then why would I ever go back to that person?
Have you ever been on the receiving end of any of these bad sales tactics? If so, think about how that felt. I’m betting it felt pretty gross. I’m also betting you don’t want to make your prospective clients or customers feel like that.
That’s really what it comes down to. How do you really want to make people feel? And if you see someone teaching a sales practice or tactic that is super out of line with how you want people to feel, then don’t sell like that.
If you want to learn what you should do to get more clients without being gross or creepy, you’ll definitely want to check out my free training!
