If you can get past the mixed metaphor, it’s important you understand that not every sales pitch is going to be a homerun. In fact, there is a chance that some will miss the mark so badly you’ll bean the mascot. No matter how hard you try, it is unrealistic to expect every pitch to be successful.

However, whether it be one-off mistakes you make on one pitch or systematic flaws that lower your chances of success on every pitch, there are ways to keep yourself in the game. First, it is important to recognize what these mistakes are and have a plan for how to overcome them. Here are some things to look out for as you refine your sales pitching skills:

Making Excuses

You need to understand that occasionally, a failed sales pitch is not your fault. Sometimes, you’re simply not able to provide what your client needs. Every salesperson has to work within the confines of what their company offers but even if your product is the best on the market, not everyone is necessarily going to want it.

Alternatively, they may be getting that product or service from somewhere else at a price you can’t match. It happens. You simply lack the ability to compete on price and you’re out. The worst thing you can do in this situation is to lie or pressure them into spending more than they should. They may go along with it when you’re face to face, but they will regret it later and this will cost you business down the road.

A failed pitch could also be due to something that is completely out of your control. Sometimes people are just in bad moods and nothing you say can change that. Just accept that you did your best and move on. You can always follow up with them after they’ve had a chance to cool down.

One caveat here is that you don’t start making excuses for every unsuccessful pitch. Make sure you’re taking a good hard look in the mirror before you start evaluating other possible influences on the situation.

Unprofessionalism

Have you ever met someone who didn’t take anything seriously and was too casual for their own good? In a professional setting, people like this can be off-putting to the point of being deal breakers. More often than not, a sales rep acting unprofessionally during a pitch kills the deal. After all, if you’re not taking things seriously, why should they?

Dress appropriately for any face-to-face meetings and respect your customer’s time by being punctual and concise. Be friendly but not over-familiar and most importantly, show how much their business means to you by being prepared.

Too Self-Focused

During a sales pitch, it can be tempting to talk about yourself and what your product can do. That’s not to say you shouldn’t talk about yourself or your product at all, but you’ve got to read the room. Sure, you need to instill confidence that you and your product can deliver but try to do it in moderation. Less is definitely more when it comes to pitching success. The last thing you want them to think is that you’re trying too hard to impress or persuade them.

Matt Heinz, founder of Heinz Marketing, said: “Filter everything you’re doing, saying and pitching through the customer’s point of view, and you’ll improve just about every metric you care about today.”

What this means is instead of talking about yourself all the time, you need to listen to what they say their needs are. In fact, if at any point you start to feel your customer is losing interest, you should always steer the conversation back towards them. People love talking about themselves and this will give you a chance to work your way back into the conversation. Then, thanks to all of the extensive pre-meeting research you did, you’ll be in a much better place to answer some of their concerns.

Lacking Confidence or Grace

While you may be doing everything right on paper, there’s a chance something’s wrong with the vibe you give off in person. For instance, if you come across as overly aggressive, your prospect or customer might feel unduly pressured. Or, if you are nervous or jittery, that might take that to mean you don’t have any confidence in what you’re selling.

Though this may sound like a small detail, it isn’t. People buy from people they like and people like dealing with confident and well-prepared professionals. To be successful in sales, you must be self-aware and know how you come across to other people.

Exuding competence and a sense of being in control will help your customer relax which will make them more likely to buy from you even if you’re not giving your best pitch.

Have you ever felt like you’ve been working your tail off for what seems like forever for a company but have nothing to show for it?

Perhaps, a coworker is getting all the higher paying projects and the promotions that you feel should be yours?

Not to put too fine a point on it, it stinks!

However, if this is something that keeps happening to you, it may not be your boss’ or your company’s fault. Ultimately, you might just be the thing that is holding you back from reaching your full potential.

In truth, there could be any number of reasons why you’re not getting to where you think you should be. But there are also many ways to pull yourself out of the slump. Read on to learn how you can move up in your career:

Assess Your Situation

The first thing you should do is try to figure out what your specific problem is with the company you’re working for or the customers you’re working with. While sometimes the issue can lie with you, it is important to look at every factor to decide what the real issue is.

As the old saying goes, just because you tend to be a little paranoid, that doesn’t mean somebody isn’t out to get you.

Perhaps you’re doing absolutely everything right, but you still can’t get ahead. It is important to look at the factors outside of your control. It could be as simple as the luck of the draw, that someone got picked instead of you for no particular reason. There could be practical reasons like a tightening budget or downsizing but sometimes, you just get dealt a bad hand. It’s the luck of the draw.

But even in these situations, there is still something you can do. You can adjust your expectations but continue to pursue those promotions and projects. You just never know when your hard work is going to get noticed and the boss will give you an opportunity.

Sometimes, however, you may just have to face up to the fact that the company you’re with isn’t capable of giving you what you want. Like it or not, you may just have to move on to give yourself a chance of reaching your full potential.

That said, it can be a clever idea to talk to your boss about your concerns and see what they have to say. Rather than guess what the issue is, they may just come right out and tell you.

Raise Your Game

One thing that is important to realize is talent alone is not going to get you what you want. If you’re able to complete your work in two-thirds the time of your teammate, most bosses will only see that you’re coworker is putting in more hours than you.

Rather than aiming to complete the task in less time, you have to play the game and do more work in the same amount of time. While this seems unfair – and it is – it is the way the game is played, and you need to accept that fact.

Moreover, you must also be willing to push yourself beyond where you are now. Coasting through the day only doing what is expected of you is not going to make you stand out. Never forget one simple fact: The place where you work is a business and if you want to get more than the person next to you, you must produce more than that person.

Push yourself to do more. Work harder and do more than is required. Take the initiative and go after those more challenging tasks. Manage your time wisely and eventually your numbers will speak for themselves.

Have A Plan

It is important to think strategically and to have a plan for where you want to be. Set goals that include day-to-day milestones as well as the ultimate goal you hope to achieve.

Opportunities and curveballs may push and pull you in different directions but having a plan will allow you to keep pushing forward in the right direction even on your worst days.

At some point, you may decide to your plan needs to change because it’s not getting you any closer to your ultimate goal. While this is not an ideal situation, it will at least make sure you don’t keep spinning your wheels at a company that is never going to get you where you want to go.

To know if someone truly loves what they do, ask them if they’d do it for free. A labor of love is something that is incredibly personal to each individual person, as it is something that they would do and enjoy doing, even if it is something they wouldn’t be paid to do. It is something heavily predicated on one’s interests and can be done for a number of reasons. From personal connection, continuing a legacy, a deep passion for the craft, or just because it’s fun.

This same desire to do what you love, despite the cost, can – and often does – apply to selling. You could be born to be a salesperson, even if it’s a venture that would only give you dimes at a time. While financial gain is a critical part of sales, there are many reasons why someone would want to pursue sales, whether it be for their career or something adjacent to their career. Read on to learn the reasons why sales can be your labor of love.

You Love to Serve Others

Perhaps you would love to be a salesperson because you like to help others? Often, a salesperson can be perceived as someone who is selfish, only in it for themselves or worse, they are a con artist skirting with legal limits. However, the best salespeople are, in a way, servants. They engage with their clients, listen to their problems, and work with them to come up with a solution. This transaction, if done fairly and honestly, will ultimately add a significant level of value to both of their lives. This especially applies if you’re selling something that you truly believe in. That feeling and desire to add value to someone else’s life can be the thing that drives you to be a salesperson.

Furthermore, sales can allow you to make long lasting relationships. Customers are more often drawn toward salespeople who have a servant attitude which makes them more likely to return. This will often create a loop that will develop into a relationship that only the salesperson and the client has. Sales can also allow you to meet a whole host of people, from clients of various different backgrounds to different salespeople and even various people you meet when you travel. If you are a people person with a passion to serve others, sales may be the career to look into.

You Love to Face Challenges and Reach Your Goals

Your passions could also lie in the art of sales itself. The sales process can be something that is appealing and draw you in. However, the main reason why someone would love the process is often because of the sense of accomplishment they get after overcoming challenges and reaching their goals. Usually, this means the type of person who thrives in sales is goal-oriented or competitive. This type of person makes it their life’s work to get as far as possible and they are love putting in the hard work it takes to get there.

Canadian writer and philosopher, Matshona Dhliwayo, said: “One who conquers the sea today is ready to conquer the ocean tomorrow.”

While it is important to know when to slow down and have good work-life balance, your work in sales can be an exciting career where your day-to-day accomplishments lead to greater challenges and greater successes. If you’re the type of person who likes pushing themselves to accomplish great things, sales could be that vessel or you.

You Love to Share What You Care About

Finally, even if your passions don’t lie in sales, they can still be used to help pursue your passions. If you’re a creative type, a craftsperson, or even an inventor, you may have something that you want to share with the rest of the world. While you don’t necessarily have to sell it, sales is an avenue to share it with a broader audience and can help support your passions.

Being able to show the world what you’ve made can grant you the satisfaction of adding something meaningful to the world and a sense of recognition and validation for what you love. While money shouldn’t be as important for your labor of love, it can also allow you to live off your passions and focus all your time on them.

There are a lot of things in the current business climate that can make sales a cold, heartless, and unhealthy career choice. In such an environment, it is important to not only focus on what can make someone a successful salesperson, but what will give them a healthy sales career.

In this context, a healthy sales career refers to not only being successful, but also admirable. It means that you’re able to be successful through honest and sustainable means, while being willing to do right by others, including both your coworkers and clients.

This is opposed to an unhealthy sales career where you try to achieve success by any means necessary while not caring about those around you. Sometimes the latter seems more appealing, as it’s quick and easy but eventually, it will kill your sales career.

However, if you’re willing to strive for a healthy sales career, not only will you become more successful in the long run, but your career will also be more fulfilling. Read on to learn the aspects you must focus on for a healthy sales career.

Honesty

The first and arguably one of the most foundational aspects of a healthy sales career is honesty. It can be very tempting for a salesperson to fudge the truth a little bit to get a sale or to get an edge over a coworker. However, if you have a shaky foundation by being dishonest, those cracks will start to grow. Little white lies could eventually cascade into blatant ones. A car salesperson may lie at first about a couple imperfections, but that dishonesty can eventually turn into selling cars with faulty and cheap parts, claiming it’s in prime condition.

This also applies to unethical and shady practices, such as manipulation, bribery, corner-cutting, etc. While they aren’t technically lying, they are still doing deceitful and immoral things to take advantage of someone else, whether it be the client or their coworkers. Of course, all of this can only go so far. It is only a matter of time before they’re caught in their lies, which will destroy their reputation, could get them fired or in legal trouble, and will ultimately lose them all of the trust they’ve accumulated.

And that is the keyword here, trust. As a salesperson, it is extremely important for you to earn the trust of your clients and your coworkers. Being honest doesn’t just mean not lying, it means being trustworthy. This means being dependable, doing the things you say you’re going to do, and having integrity, doing the right thing even if it’s inconvenient or even detrimental. Doing things this way may not be quick or easy and could cost you in the short run. However, being honest will allow your clients to trust you. They will come back to you for your reliable services, benefiting you in the long run.

Empathy

Business can be incredibly cold and ruthless, that doesn’t mean you have to be. It’s an unfortunate reality that a lot of businesses get where they are because of being practical and not caring how their actions will affect others. This can lead to a Darwinian mindset of survival of the fittest and while that can lead to success, very rarely does that create a healthy sales career. Often those who fall in this trap will eventually fall and will have nobody to turn to.

Thus, it is important to be empathetic on your sales journey. Being empathetic means that you’re thinking of others before yourself. For your clients, you listen to them about their problems and think about how you can best serve their needs. You’re showing that you care about their situation and that they are your top priority over their money. This not only can get people to like you, but they will want to do business with you again, because they feel heard.

This also applies to your relationship with your coworkers. While sales is a very competitive field and sometimes some will do better than others, that doesn’t mean you should treat people poorly and not care about their situation. You should be building other people up, collaborating with them and sometimes leading them to help push the team forward, while not stepping on anyone’s toes. Being empathetic and helping others will not only further build up trust but will open you up to be helped when you need it.

Commitment

Let’s say your sales career is a car. If success is the destination, honesty is the frame and empathy was the engine, then commitment is the fuel. In the end, even if you have every other positive trait in the back of your mind, it is your commitment to your career and your drive to succeed which will push you furthest.

Thomas Edison once said: “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.” Even if your sales endeavors don’t lead you to immediate success or even if you catastrophically fail, it’s important to push yourself, no matter how difficult it gets. While empathy and honesty will allow you to have a healthy sales career, your commitment to those ideals and to your success will keep it alive.

A salesperson who does not value their clients is doomed to fail. A common pitfall for many fledgling salespeople – and sometimes overconfident veteran sales professionals– is to become too self-centered.

They only think about what will move them forward in their career, rather than what will help their client the most. This approach will make clients feel like an afterthought and unlikely to seek out your services in the future.

During the world’s current, post-pandemic, economic situation, with the possibility of a recession, businesses must be more frugal. This means salespeople who fail to provide value to their customers will be left out in the cold. To truly become successful as a salesperson, you must show your clients you value them as well as whatever it is you are trying to sell them.

This can be achieved by using the V.A.L.U.E method. This method involves using a checklist of things that you can provide to a client. Here are the five things you need to do to ensure you are providing your clients with something of value:

Validate Your Client’s Problems

When talking to a client about the problem they are facing, do not treat it like it is not important. If you come across as apathetic or worse, annoyed, and hostile that they even brought it up, they will be far less receptive to what you have to say. It shows you only care about what they can give you and that you do not care about them or their problems. If I’s important enough to them that they are trying to fix it, it should be a top priority for you, too.

Show that you care about them and their problems by conducting some research beforehand and then listening to them talk about the challenges their business is facing. Listening, knowing enough about the problem to respond in an educated way, and validating that their problem is important and will go a long way to instilling trust in you.

Articulate Your Solution’s Value

One of the most common pitfalls for any growing business is not having any concrete goals and plans to work towards. However, as outlined by George T. Doran in an old article he wrote for Management Review: “There’s a SMART way to write management goals and objectives.” He then proceeded to break down what SMART goals are; that is Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time Sensitive.

This strategy has been used by many goal-oriented people – from entrepreneurs to athletes – ever since. The point of this strategy is to make sure your goals are as well-defined as possible, so that you know exactly how and what you need to do to achieve them. It also gives you a plan that is easy to evaluate, allows you to easily tweak it, and ensures that everybody is on the same page.

Learn About Your Client

Before you even start constructing your pitch to your client, do your homework. Learn about the company, its history, its decision-makers, and the problems that they are facing. You can find a lot of this information from websites and from coworkers who may have knowledge of the company. Knowing this information will give you a significant edge when you pitch to them. Never go in blind and try to wing it. Perhaps you’re the smoothest talker on the planet but that’s not going to help you if your customer or client has a very specific problem, and you don’t know anything about it.

In 1973, Peter Drucker, a famous Austrian-American management consultant said: “The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well, the product or service sells itself.”

The same way of thinking applies to sales, as marketing and sales pitching are somewhat linked. If you know enough about them and show how your solution can solve their problem, you’ll be far more likely to succeed.

Understand Your Competition

The phrase “know your enemy” applies to sales just as much as it does war and politics. Knowing how your competition is trying to solve the same problems you are will give you an idea of how to make yourself stand out. You may be able to do things that your competition can’t or simply be better at it than they are. Show your client that your service will be able to do things that the competition can’t or won’t do.

Execute With Excellence

Finally, show that you value your clients by doing everything in your power to provide them with the best service possible. Do your best to make sure the product or service you deliver is high quality. If shipping is involved, make sure it reaches them in a timely manner. Be professional and polite, answer whatever questions they may have, and be the best salesperson you can be by showing them you truly value their time.