If you are an entrepreneur you spend plenty of time selling things.  And you may be really good at or you wouldn’t still be doing what you are doing.  But there are 3 huge mistakes that we sometimes  still make.

Huge Mistake #1- List Your Services

List your services online or on a brochure but the last thing you want to do when you’ve someone's attention is go down your long list of services.  This tells them that you may be more interested in your business and less interested in theirs or the issues they may be facing in their business.  Instead, do a little research beforehand and then do your best at describing their pain points to let them know that you understand them.  Then go into what your company does to alleviate those pain points.  If they quickly dismiss your comments, move on to the next problem, or better yet, let this turn into a discussion where they tell you first-hand what their problem is.  If this is the case, take notes because your prospect has just challenged you to fix his problems!

Huge Mistake #2- No Value Proposition

This is your promise to the customers and the best time to let your prospect know why they should buy from you over all of the other options there are out there.  Forgetting to do so groups you in with the over-sized, the-taste-is-a-little-funky-tasting bagged breakfast cereals, instead of with the high-quality boxed cereals, where most companies strive to be.  This is the perfect time to name-drop and tell stories about how you helped someone else with similar pains, to a viable and quality solution.

Huge Mistake #3- No Next Step

No next step, no follow up and no call to action; you might as well have been talking to your mouse pad for the last twenty minutes.  Suggest a follow up call, or a facility tour, or a demo; anything to push along the relationship.  If not, it's too easy to be forgotten.  I met a manager and sales representative that said to me “…they have my information already…they’ll call if they want.”  This was the first issues I addressed, and she immediately started seeing an increase in her sales funnel as she incorporated next steps and marketing initiatives to help spur those next steps along.

Avoid making one of the three hugest sales mistakes ever and enjoy more productive sales interactions.  This information translates very well into advertising.  Any marketing firm can tell you that your messages are targeted to a particular segment in order to deliver the most relevant message.  By avoiding the mistakes above you should be able to sale almost anything to anyone, and write up the ad copy to boot.