The Fear of Imperfection and How It Negatively Affects Selling

Sales organizations and salespeople often take service imperfections and failures way too personally.

Clients often pick up on any feelings of service inadequacy and then adopt the opinion that they have been short-changed or cheated. Salespeople respond to that agitation which magnifies the emotional impact on the salesperson because they have a personal "relationship."

Perhaps too personal.

What manifests is reduced confidence in the salesperson and a constant inward focus on never letting that error happen again.

The salesperson starts playing "not to lose" rather than pursuing the best avenues to ensure customer success.

A debrief on what caused a service failure is always needed, but emotional over-correction is detrimental as it manifests one's biggest fears.

That manifestation often results in an obsessive review of the error, managers are embarrassed, and the whole sales team goes to exaggerated lengths to appease the client.

Clients, who often don't know whether an error was large or small, assume that it was a significant problem because of the response, and suddenly we're on the back foot, struggling to recover.

Operational problems can't be allowed to become a trend, but no one is perfect; good clients know this. Maintaining equal business posture assists in emotional overreaction.

Rather than fretting over past mistakes, review your sales process to see if errors can be eliminated.

When a service issue arises (and it will), it's not unusual that the problem starts with not finding the REAL issues in discovery, OVER PROMISING in the proposal, or not setting proper expectations in post-sell.

All in control of sales.

Learn and correct, but don't let occasional errors blur the fact that you're successful far more often than not.