When Salespeople Go 4-F: The Top Four Mistakes Salespeople Make

Americans old enough to remember the days of the military draft will recognize the 4-F designation as the Selective Service category for those who were unfit for military service for a variety of reasons. I was asked recently to name what I thought were the top mistakes salespeople make and I came up with these 4 F’s.

1. Inadequate Frequency

In 1986 CBS news anchor, Dan Rather, told us that his Manhattan mugger said, What’s the frequency Kenneth? No one is sure to this day what happened to Dan Rather. But there’s no doubt about the number one reason salespeople fail: they don’t see enough people. It’s not personality or poor communication skills. Dudley & Goodson’s research reveal 80% of salespeople wash out due to the simple fact they didn’t sell enough. And why didn’t they sell enough? Because they don’t make enough calls, talk to enough prospects, and get enough referrals from current clients to achieve or sustain sales success.

Inadequate frequency refers to the fact that selling is a numbers game. The word on the street is that it’s all about relationships. If that’s so, it’s about the number of relationships. Reps make a mistake when they attempt to manage their career subjectively and emotionally rather than on the basis of sales science. They subscribe to self-help gurus to help them manipulate their psyche to find motivation and desire instead of realizing that selling conforms to the laws of statistics and salespeople with a little calculation can hit any number they want. The vast majority of salespeople never reap the great rewards of sales precisely because they believed they had found a short-cut around the inevitable scientific truths of the ratios of dials to contacts, contacts to conversations, and conversations to closed sales. The best salespeople and sales managers know the frequency of behaviors necessary to reach their goals.

2. Faking

Salespeople are notorious for their ability and willingness to tell a story, and what’s more, to paint a picture of a future state in which the customer’s needs are met and even exceeded. So it should come as no surprise that salespeople are prone to elaboration and exaggeration. The mistake they often make is when this natural gift of persuasiveness crosses the line into fakery; promising more than can be delivered, pretending confidence, and putting people into products and services they really don’t need. Fakery is sacrificing the long term opportunity for a short-term gain. Peak performers have a strategic sense that allows them to interact with both customers and mentoring managers with the greatest of integrity, knowing that what goes round comes round. Faking it only hurts the salesperson in the long run.

3. Poor Focus

Lack of focus is directly related to the first two ’s: not generating the frequency of calls necessary to meet goals, and the expenditure of energy on faking it instead of making it. Growing up as a kid my parents used to warn me about starting down the path of fakery. You better have a great memory if you’re going to tell lies, they would say. Salespeople who fake it quickly lose focus. Keeping the cover-up going becomes more important than making sales, increases stress, and lowers the energy available for peak performance..

Salespeople need a laser-like focus on high pay-off activities. Once again those relationship is everything mantras are leading a lot of reps down the primrose path of poor performance. Jeff Rossi, Director of Retail Learning & Development at E*Trade, says, Too many salespeople are professional visitors; they confuse rapport-building with results. They lose focus on the purpose of the relationship and that’s to make sales.

Loss of focus can also be an organizational issue as training departments lurch from fad to craze and back again or HR implements paperwork and workshops required by the latest foray of nanny government into the workplace. Salespeople must keep their focus on what generates new business unless the company gets the bright idea to measure something other than profit (like teamwork or quality or some other substitute for good management).

4. Poor Follow-up

One of the great ironies of our times is the fact that as sales departments invest huge sums in relationship selling programs follow-up is so poor. Relationship selling can create the illusion that prospects and clients are our friends who will initiate the call when they need something.

Companies under pressure to cut costs and increase profits adopt churn and burn strategies, cutting jobs and creating follow-up failure. Leads developed months previously languish in the dead files of former employees, in effect creating opportunities for competitors. Some companies are under such competitive pressure to increase sales that sales organizations get caught up in contests and one call, one-off targets. The nature of transactional selling is a disregard for follow-up.

Some salespeople in states with Do Not Call lists avoid the telephone and their follow-up suffers. Finally the coarsening of culture means it will never enter the head of some salespeople to follow-up a call or a sale with a thank you note or phone call.

Avoiding the 4Fs really comes down to paying attention to details. Salespeople who want to succeed will know and work their success frequencies, rejecting every fantasy of becoming fat and happy account managers who no longer prospect. Peak performers don’t fake it with customers or managers. If they have a problem they talk about it to the people who make a difference. Top guns don’t pretend to be something they’re not. They’re in sales and they take great pride in their career and don’t need to hide behind fake career identities such as account specialist or consultant. Focus gets sharpened by staying honest about the frequencies of success. Anything that takes away time and attention from generating sales is the salesperson’s worst enemy. Follow-up can be improved by something as simple as a pocket notebook to jot down reminders. When you make enough sales, then you can reward yourself with a PDA. If you say you’re going to do something, make a note to do it. If the customer says he or she is going to get back in touch, make a note to follow-up.

Pay attention to these four critical areas. Don’t go 4F go to the top.