Making sales mistakes can be detrimental to your company’s bottom line. In order to rectify sales mistakes, you need to know what they are and be able to identify them within your own sales department. So, here are five of the biggest sales mistakes you are making, and how you can fix them.

1. Hard Selling

Your sales department’s key selling tactic should be that of nurturing relationships with clients to make the sale, not pushing the products or services onto them. This is one of the most disastrous sales mistakes your company can make. If your sales reps are still hard selling to customers, they will come off as rude, pushy, and demanding. That type of selling died out in the past. Relationship nurturing is now the best way to increase your sales numbers, build your reputation, and create long-lasting business relationships with clients. If you see that your sales people are still cold calling, they’re making sales mistakes. It’s time to re-evaluate your selling strategy.

2. No Calls to Action

Your sales reps shouldn’t leave a conversation or a meeting with a client without a call to action being set in place. It’s the sales people’s obligation to ask for a commitment-they shouldn’t leave things open-ended. At the end of every meeting, the sales person should be asking for a firm date on a next meeting or another commitment that can make the client move forward in the buying cycle. Without proper follow up, these leads can get cold. Sales mistakes like this can cost you sales.

3. Focusing on Your Own Needs

Hopefully, your sales reps are excited about the products or services that they are selling. However, if they keep going on and on about what they’re selling without listening to the client and letting him talk, they won’t be making many sales. Customers are interested in how your products or services can help them solve a problem or address a particular need that they have. Therefore, all selling should be based on what your sales rep can do for the customer. Focusing on your own needs instead of the client’s needs is one of the most common sales mistakes you can make.

4. Making Promises

When it comes to closing deals, some sales reps can get ahead of themselves and promise things that they can’t actually deliver. This enthusiasm can be detrimental to your company’s image. It can cost you repeat business, which is why it’s one of the biggest sales mistakes. Your reputation can be tarnished if clients can’t believe what your sales people are telling them. It’s not useful to promise a client the world if you can’t deliver-you won’t get the deal in the end and you will likely lose that customer for future deals, too. You should have clear guidelines set out for how far your sales reps can go in negotiations, so they know not to overstep their boundaries and make promises they can’t keep.

5. Not Being Organized

No one likes having his or her time wasted. But, if your reps are going to meetings unprepared and unorganized, this is exactly what they’re doing. Getting a meeting is your chance to create a relationship and explain to the client that you have a solution to his problem. If you’re spending the whole meeting learning the fundamentals about the client’s company, his job, and his needs, you’re not leaving yourself time to actually build rapport. This is one of the most destructive sales mistakes. Before any meeting or conversation, your sales reps should be performing research on the prospect and his company and preparing answers to questions that might come up-whether about his needs or about your own products, pricing, or timelines. Don’t waste the opportunity for a first great impression by being unprepared.

Avoiding these five sales mistakes can help you close deals and build long-term relationships.