9 Ways You Are A Desperate Salesperson

Are you a desperate salesperson?

Nothing’s worse than a desperate salesperson.

As a matter of fact, scratch the “sales” from “salesperson” in the last sentence, and the fact still rings true.

Nobody likes dealing with or doing business with desperate people.

Have you been in a situation before where you gave off desperate vibes? Probably. I think we all have at one point or another. Has someone ever been desperate in trying to win you or your business over? Probably.

You probably already have an idea of what I’m talking about. But let’s dive a little deeper and figure out the causes and how to prevent them. (And some of these may surprise you.)

9 Ways you are sounding desperate in sales

Here are the 9 biggest mistakes that lead to the desperation epidemic in sales:

1. Constantly pestering your prospects.
2. Losing your patience.
3. Being afraid to say no.
4. Offering a discount too early.
5. Offering more than you can deliver.
6. Not respecting the sales process.
7. Getting combative instead of empathetic.
8. You’re always in sales mode.
9. Trying to do business with low-quality leads.

Constantly pestering your prospects

This is one of the most common mistakes sales reps make, and also one of the hardest to figure out how to get right. There’s a fine line between persistence and harassment, especially when it comes to cold calling.

So how do you get it right? Keep in mind your end goal: relationship building for the long term. You aren’t just in it for the next sale. I hope not, anyway.

If you have absolutely urgent news you need to share with your prospect or customer, then, by all means, call until you reach them. If you’re following up with a prospect constantly, basically begging them to buy your product, this is where desperation kicks in. And I’m not saying don’t follow up.

But you need to be able to use good judgment here on how many calls are too many.

Losing Your Patience

This one may be obvious, but it’s also very common, especially if you are working on commission.

Let me paint a picture for you. The end of the month is nearing, and you’ve been relying on one deal to close to get paid for the month, otherwise your SOL. Without this deal, you’re gonna miss your rent and have to survive on cup noodles for the next 30 days.

The prospect told you he would send all the paperwork back last week to finalize the deal — but now, nothing. It’s now the last day of the month, and still, complete silence from the prospect. What are you gonna do? Lose your patience because you need to get paid and call the prospect 100x times until they pick up? You can try that if you’d like.

But here’s the thing. Shit happens. You get to get over it and figure out a way forward. The moment you lose your patience in a negotiation or in a deal is the moment you’ve lost. Your prospect can literally smell the stench of desperation seeping from your pores.

Being Afraid To Say No

Okay, so this is a tough one for the vast majority of rookie salespeople. You wanna try and bend and stretch like Mr. Fantastic for your prospects and deliver on the (sometimes ridiculous) things they ask for. Nothing wrong with wanting the best for your customer.

However, you’re gonna need to learn how and when to put your foot down. There’s gonna be times where you absolutely can not deliver on your prospect’s additional requests or accommodations – and if you KNOW you can’t, don’t beat around the bush. Be direct, and upfront. Tell them you can’t do it.

Here’s the thing: Your time is valuable. It’s as simple as that. Don’t downplay the own value you bring to the table by trying to meet all of your prospects’ demands. Don’t be overly eager to be bossed around.

Offering a discount or “downsell” too early

I know it’s tempting to offer a sale or a discount to reel your prospects in when they don’t seem to budge — but try and hold off from using this too early in your sales pitch.

Offering discounts work, period. But do it too often and too fast, and your product and service start to lose tremendous value. In the eyes of your prospects, it’s nothing more than a desperate attempt at getting their business without truly proving the value of your service.

There’s actually a couple of other problems with this sort of frequent and often discounting method that I wanted to get into:

• You’ll often end up with so-called “bottom-feeders,” who typically only buy because there was a sale or discount. Guess what happens the next time you have another product or service to offer? They won’t budge unless there’s another deep discount.
• People may end up buying ONLY because of the discount, and NOT because they saw the value in your service. I’m sure you can see why this is not good.
• You’re probably selling yourself short. You can still end up with great customers, even if you offer a discount too early. But these same customers probably would have bought without a discount or a sale.

Offering more than you can deliver

This one is pretty simple. If you’re not able to deliver on what your prospect wants, don’t promise it. Your credibility goes out the window once you over-promise and under-deliver.

If you are overpromising because you think that’s what you need to do to make the sale, stop that right now. 

In my opinion, the habit of overpromising stems from a lack of conviction, confidence, and self-belief. Take a look in the mirror. Do you like what you see? Do you think your service is truly valuable? Well, it better be. Otherwise, you need to start asking yourself some hard questions.

So why is this a sign of desperation? Because your prospects know when a salesperson is blowing smoke up their rear. They have a sort of sixth sense for it. So not only will you sound desperate, but you’ll end up looking like a fool for doing it anyway.

You don’t respect the sales process

This kind of goes hand-in-hand with losing your patience. Just like patience is a virtue, so is trusting your sales process.

There is a system and a sales cycle that all customers go through. They start cold, become warm, then turn into customers.

There is no magic bullet around this. You need to follow your process and respect it. If you don’t have any sales process in place, you need to build one out.

How does this lead to desperation? By trying to force your prospects through certain stages of the funnel when they aren’t ready for it.

Getting combative instead of empathetic

How do you handle objections during your sales calls? Do you start butting heads? Do you start fighting with your prospects whenever they bring up an objection? How do you handle the not interested blow-off?

The right way to handle objections is a long topic that we won’t get into here. But let’s just quickly cover the wrong way to do it.

Fighting with your prospects over why they won’t buy or don’t have the time, or whatever excuse or reason they give you, is a sure sign of desperation to the prospect. This is especially true on cold calls when YOU are calling someone out of the blue.

Imagine this for a second. Someone calls you out of the blue to sell you a subscription to the local newspaper. You rightfully tell him you aren’t interested, because it’s 2022, and who reads newspapers anymore? He goes apesh*t on you and says “WHAT do you mean you AREN’T INTERESTED!?! IT’S THE BEST NEWSPAPER OUT!!”

How would you take that? Obviously, the guy needs some sales training. But regardless, he would come across as desperate, and quite frankly, pathetic.

You’re always in sales mode

You’re a sales person who makes a lot of sales calls. I get it. It’s hard to get out of sales mode sometimes.

But sometimes, you just need to be able to talk and have an actual conversation with your prospect. No matter how well you sell your product — if that’s ALL you do, you’re not bringing enough value to the table.

Most salespeople never fully understand this part. They misunderstand what “always be closing” actually means. “Always Be Closing” doesn’t mean you need to make the most aggressive, persistent sales call until the prospect either buys or dies.

Sales is a lot more tactical than that. Part of being a successful salesperson is discovering the prospects’ pain points, finding out what they need by LISTENING to them, and learning how to talk to the customer like a human being, rather than begging for their business.

The salesperson who is always in “sales mode” is a desperate salesperson.

Dealing with Low-Quality Leads

There was a saying that used to go around when I was a new salesperson, “You can’t polish a turd.” Not sure where the quote originally came from, but I like it.

When it comes to doing business with unqualified leads, that’s pretty much what you’re doing.

So how does this make you desperate? Chasing after low-quality, unqualified leads will basically force your hand to make all the mistakes covered in this article. If there’s one thing you can do right now to improve your business, it’s to stop trying to do business with poorly qualified leads. 

How do you not sound desperate in sales?

Now that we covered the mistakes, let’s go over some preventative tips. There’s a couple of key tips I’ll focus on because I feel if you do these four things well, you WON’T be making any of the mistakes listed above.

Keep your pipeline filled

To truly succeed in sales, you need a full pipeline, constantly. What does this mean? You should never be relying on that “one” deal to close. This is all about taking action. Do you have a great, life-changing deal that’s in the process of closing? Great! Go and prospect some more, and fill up your qualified lead pipeline. You should always be working on multiple deals, or at the very least, introducing yourself to new people who can use your product.

Manage your time effectively

This leads me to the second point. Time management is the bane of many salespeople (skilled salespeople, included). What happens if you have multiple deals your working on, but you can’t keep track of them all? Things will start to fall through the cracks, deals will fall apart, and all the work you did will be for naught. Learn to manage your tasks, and prioritize your time. It’s one of the best non-sales skills to have a salesperson. And yes, to do it effectively is a skill.

Always research your industry, products, competitors, and your prospects better

Do some more homework! This is pretty simple. Don’t be lazy. Over time — trends change, products change, what people want changes. Stay up to date with current market conditions. Research your prospects better before calling them. A little legwork goes a long way when it comes to making sales calls.

Learn to value yourself

Lastly, learn to value yourself and have some self-respect. If there’s only so much you can do for your customer, or even so much that you’re WILLING to do for the customer, you need to let them know that. Your time is just as valuable as theirs. You’ll never make it past the desperation stage if you can’t learn to value your own self-worth.