Michelle Terpstra, CRO at 7 Figure MSP, breaks down three sales mistakes MSP owners make: bait-and-switch tactics, pressuring prospects, and dishonesty like fake deadlines. She pushes transparency and honesty instead, and says aligning start dates to what clients actually need works better than rushing them.
Do you think you're a slimy salesperson? IT and MSP business owners, listen up so that you don't make these mistakes. Hey, I'm Michelle Terpstra, the CRO over at 7 figure MSP. And this is not where my career started. I have done sales for Fortune 500, I've owned my own training company and now I'm here as the CRO. So I've got a few things to say about slimy salespeople and you're going to want to listen it. All right? So the number one most slimy thing you can do is what I call bait and switch. Okay? Bait and switch is horrible. If you want them to book a sales call, let them know it's a sales call. Don't pretend it's something else. So what happens is they expect one thing and they get another. And what that does is that arms the buyer. Now, they don't trust you, they probably don't like you. And your likelihood of having success selling to this business, it becomes very, very small. So in the sales process, always be transparent. So number two is don't put your pressure onto your prospects. Okay? Now, we all want to grow, we all want to make more sales, we all want more clients. But you can't let a prospect know that it is really critical and it makes you look really bad. And they're going to go into la la land and you're never going to see them again and you're going to get ghosted and you're going to wonder why. It's because it's towards the end of the month, you really want this new client and you're starting to act desperate and you're starting to put a lot of pressure on someone to make a decision that is no bueno, friends, do not do that. That once again, you will arm the buyer and we don't want that. People do not buy when they are armed. You need to disarm the buyer and make sure that you're building trust in the sales process and aligning the date for them to start with you based on their business needs, not yours. A real life example outside of sales and is if you've been at a bar and somebody comes up to you and they're really pressuring you, what do you want to do? Do you want to run or do you want to engage and chat with that nice gentleman? Probably not, right? So I want you to think about this next time you're in a sales process, all right? And our last one, dishonesty in the sales process. And that is a really, really critical. This can look a lot of different ways, but one thing would be is offering a discount, for example, or, or a special bonus or something additional to new prospective clients and saying that it expires at a certain time when it doesn't. So that's one example. The other example is saying that you can do something that you can't do just to get a client. So be honest and transparent and you'll see success. If you're wondering what a highly effective sales process looks like, that is not slimy at all. I encourage you to book a call with us and, and see how we treat you.
