9 years ago
April 13, 2016

Discover How You Can Lose a Sales Client in 3 Easy Steps

In this article, we’ll cover three simple steps on how to lose a sales client.

Rhys Metler

Looking to lose a sales client but not sure how? Don’t worry, it’s a simple process, and it comes quite naturally once you get the hang of it! What you may not realize are the many tricks for losing a sales client that you’re already using every day-take those basic methods of losing clients and polish them to a peak, and you’ll never sell again. In this article, we’ll cover three simple steps that should send any sales client running for the hills. Of course, if you ever change your mind about losing clients, these might be worth avoiding.

1.  Sell Now, Ignore the Future. 

Few things can lose you a sales client as quickly and efficiently as rushing your first sale through. Utilize as many high-pressure tactics as possible without building any sort of lasting foundation, and your client will be regretting their purchase almost as soon as the funds clear. There’s a final stage to the sales cycle, after the sale, and that’s where you want to lose the client. When they stop and think about the purchase and how they were treated, you want them to realize they’d have been better off with a different product, a different seller, a different anything. Not only will you lose the sales client, they’ll spread the word about you and you’ll lose potential sales, too. Perfect!

2. Don’t Bother Personalizing Anything. 

Keeping a sales client often involves adapting your approach, learning what you can about them, and changing things that need to be changed to keep their business. When you want to lose a sales client, don’t bother with any of that. Even If you messed up on the initial sale and forged a decent relationship, there will be plenty of opportunities for you to ruin your relationship with the client. Treat reasonable and unreasonable expectations the same in your dealings with the client. Respond to emails with form letters, return phone calls when you know you’ll get an answering machine so you can leave a bland message, and don’t try too hard to remember names and faces-the fifteenth time you ask a client what his name is might just be the time you manage to lose him as a sales client!

3. Never Follow Up.

Some sales people have a very hard time losing sales clients, because they do silly things like following up. Calling a client to see if they’re satisfied with the product or service they purchased, letting them know there’s a new version or update or change they should be aware of, these sorts of follow ups only make the client more satisfied, more happy with being your sales client. In fact, that level of customer service can cause sales clients to stick with you even if your product falls behind the competition, or economic hardships cut sales across the board! And you’ll end up with more clients, too, because the word will get out. Who wants to deal with all those people?

So there you have it. It’s actually rather easy to lose a sales client, if you just remember to treat them as another cog in your sales machine. Treating them like people makes them get too attached, and attached clients just won’t go away, even if things go wrong. You definitely don’t want to pay attention to them once you’ve secured your first sale. Unless, of course, you don’t want to lose a single sales client.

Rhys Metler

Rhys is a tenacious, top performing Senior Sales Recruiter with 15+ years of focused experience in the Digital Media, Mobile, Software, Technology and B2B verticals. He has a successful track record of headhunting top performing sales candidates for some of the most exciting brands in North America. He is a Certified Recruitment Specialist (CRS) and has expert experience in prospecting new business, client retention/renewals and managing top performing sales and recruitment teams. Rhys enjoys spending quality time with his wife, son, and daughters, BBQing on a hot summer day and tropical vacations.

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