Cold calls are the most everyday sales call. Data shows that even today—when many marketers believe cold calling to be dead—it’s still more effective than social selling, trade shows, and email campaigns.

The first step a sales rep takes to approach the customer is cold. Most industries utilize this type of sales call to throw out a wide net, gain new clients, and potentially increase sales.

1. Avoid Pitching

This is up there with widely practiced sales mistakes. Whenever a salesperson is asked for a pitch, they go into overdrive about their product.

The prospect has heard the lines before and could smell them off her breath from a million countries away. That’s why pitching is one of the worst sales mistakes today. Instead of pitching, take your time to engage prospects in a real conversation to understand what’s happening in their world. After that engagement, you will determine if the prospect will be a perfect fit for your product.

2. Talking A Lot

If you are setting to make a sale or solve a problem for a customer, you will be listening more rather than doing the talking. Professional sales training involves more questioning and listening techniques than it does speaking skills. It knows the right questions to ask, not just talk, which leads to closed sales.

3. Making Promises You Can’t Keep

You probably need to make sales but do not at any one time make promises you cannot keep. That translates to lying. One client may be late to catch on, but they can spread the word once they do, and the effects are like ripples once they do. This will cripple your business in the not-so-short run.

But how do you sell then? Here are two suggestions:

• Instead of over-promising, let the prospects sell to themselves. You can do it by asking the right questions that gently push the prospect in the right direction. In the end, they’ll convince themselves that they need your product.

• Another way is particularly suitable for the free trial stage. To ensure your prospects are pleasantly surprised, you can under-promise and over-deliver. If the expectations are low, but the product can do more, prospects will be blown away by the experience they get. This will help you win them over during the next sale stage.

4. Closing

In modern selling, for some reason, people believe in closing as a top determinant for good salespeople. That is not entirely true. It is all about taking prospects through a process to determine whether they’re a fit while creating value for them. Closing makes the sales process focus only on creating a stellar sales process where the prospect effectively does the closing for you.

5. Lack of personalization

With the inclusion of automation, most salespeople will use chatbots and other kinds of bots to attend to the needs of their customers and clients. But I'm afraid that's not right. The difference between human interaction and robot interaction can be made quickly.

No one wants to be talking to an emotionless robot. Personalize your messages to make the interactions organic and authentic.

First of all, sales is not a one-size-fits-all game. Being personal in your messages gives the message a tone of friendliness. Messages that appear personal seem to invite customers to take action. This makes them think you are interested in their likes and preferences, making them feel special. Don't make your email messages look corporate, write your messages like you are talking to your customers in person. This will become easy for you to connect with them.