The Prospecting Professor: Bad Sales Behaviors

March 15, 2006

Bad Sales Behaviors

A few years ago, Purchasing magazine surveyed their audience, i.e. purchasing professionals, and asked what traits they liked best...and least...in salespeople.

The #1 most admired characteristic was thoroughness and follow-through. Coming in #2 was market knowledge and willingness to keep one posted.

The least desirable trait was a basic lack of knowledge, and a lack of preparation on the part of the salesperson. Similarly, a lack of interest and/or purpose on the part of the salesperson was viewed negatively.

Interestingly, in a survey completed in November of 2005, Herbert Research uncovered that 62% of salespersons spent 20 minutes or less for sales calls. 33.3% spent 1-10 minutes on preparation.

Another interesting finding of the survey is the sources that salespeople used, 44% used Google as their principal source. In contrast, only 2% used the Wall Street Journal, either print or online, as their go-to source.

This last point is a topic worthy of discussion by itself. With the ubiquitous presence of Google, many of us have forgotten about the distinctions between the visible, and invisible, web. The "visible web" is what you see in the results pages from general web search engines. It's also what you see in almost all search directories. The "invisible web" is what you cannot retrieve ("see") in the search results and other links contained in these types of tools. The "invisible web" includes most databases, and sites that are password-protected, e.g. the Wall Street Journal Online.

Depending upon who you listen to, Google indexes between 4-8 billion pages. In comparison, the 60 largest "invisible web" sources contain 84 billion pages of content.

In other words, Google is not God...or his son either.