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Guest post by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith Become an Author

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Are you easy to do business with? Are you creating obstacles that prevent your customers from reaching you? Does it not make sense to make the sales path as smooth as possible?

So many businesses clamor to increase sales. Yet when working with them as an executive coach or sales coach, I notice many boulders (obstacles) that they have placed on the sales path. These boulders really are, in many cases, their (business owners and sales professionals) egos in disguise and turn away so much business.

Boulder Number One: Telephone
Technology allows for automated calling. Call most companies and you will hear a plethora of instructions from entering the extension number to striking a specific key for a specific department. All of this works for the business, but really is a turn off for an existing loyal customer or potential customer. Who has the bigger ego, the business or the loyal customer?

Boulder Number Two: Credit Applications
Receiving payment is necessary. Yet, I have watched businesses demand a completed credit application for a cash transaction because the company needs to get all the information into the computer. Credit applications should be opportunities to expand the business relationship and not limit it before the first transaction happens. Again, this is an ego issue, we the business are right, and you the customer must comply.

Boulder Number Three: Customer Service Department
All sale people are the customer service department. Having a separate department creates an enormous gap between the sales person and business on one side and the customer on the other side. Yes, sales people are busy, but they should be responsible for most communications between the customer and the business. Relegating all communication to a separate department does not build or strength customer loyalty, but rather weakens it. Here is the ego of the sales person who does not have time to deal with the minutia of the sales. I actually had one of my vendors tell me that I asked too many questions. He did not have time to answer questions about delivery or quality or technical issues.

Boulder Number Four: Attitudes
Attitudes can make doing business difficult from the frequently heard “This is the way we have always done it.” to “This is not my job, you need to speak to so and so, let me transfer you.” Everyone in the organization should have an attitude of “Do It.” Customers do not want to hear why something was not done because that is not their problem, but yours. Once again, this is all about the egos of the sales professionals or business owners.

Boulder Number Five: Inconsistency
When businesses lack specific procedures and policies or when someone jumps in to intervene, inconsistency is the result. This is a big boulder because employees forget the previous intervention while the customer never forgets. Here the ego takes over and expects you to deal with what is currently happening and not what transpired in the past.

Boulder Number Six: Communication
Poor communication is a sales killer and ultimately can attribute to the death of any business. Actually, this is not just one boulder, but many as communication is a problem at all levels of any business and between all interactions among stakeholders to shareholders. Big egos probably suffer the most from poor communication because these egos are more focused on telling than listening.

Boulder Number Seven: Self-Leadership
The absence of effective self leadership skills such as decision making to team collaboration present significant sales challenges. When businesses lack strong self leadership skills in all internal customers, sales will suffer.

Great sales people learn to leave their egos at the door and understand that they must be easy to do business with. So if you want to increase sales, remove the boulders and make the sales path to your door easy to walk. Eventually, you will have customers running to your business because your sales path is boulder free.

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