Salespeople Need to “Prune” Themselves for Success in 2025!

By Michael J Griffin

7-minute read

Have you ever pruned a tree in your yard? A few years ago, one of my favorite bloggers, Joyce Meyer, was helping her husband prune one of their trees. There were times when her husband cut the branches back so far that she said to him, “There is nothing left. You have totally destroyed our tree!” But he said, “You just watch and see.” And sure enough, before long the pruned tree was much better looking than it was before.

Just like trees need pruning from time to time, you and I as salespeople need to be “pruned” to make us move fruitful in achieving win3 sales solutions for our customers, our company and ourselves. We may not enjoy and may even resist the pruning process, but when it’s over, we’re much better salespeople than we were before, harvesting the fruit of sales success and more healthy customer relationships.

Below are the most common bad habits that many salespeople have. They are a lid to their sales performance and detrimental to building healthy long term loyal customer relationships. Review this list of negative behaviors and attitudes that limit your sales success and then create a consistent plan prune them from your life! Prune away these dead branches, and be more fruitful in 2025!

And don’t forget, you will need help and support to prune them from your life. Bad habits are easy to pick up but difficult to extinguish. This will require you to find an “accountability partner” to keep you motivated and on track to prune these bad habits. Your sales manager, a colleague, or coach can do this for you.

Here are 10 bad habits that salespeople must eliminate to achieve more fruitful success in their sales careers

1. Are you a Content Blaster, Neglecting Customer Needs?

Salespeople often focus too much on their own goals and targets, forgetting that understanding and addressing customer needs is paramount. This selfish approach can lead to missed opportunities and damaged relationships. The most common behaviour is “tell and sell,” blasting the customer with your product features and benefits rather than asking good questions to create a meaningful business discussion based on first identifying then solving customer problems with your product solutions.

2. Poor Listening

Many times salespeople are preoccupied with what to say next to respond to their customer, they stop “active listening” to their customer. Not listening well, leads to possibly giving wrong information, and, eroding trust with your customer – he or she thinks, “this salesperson doesn’t listen to me, want to understand me, so why should I trust him/her?”

3. Inconsistent Follow-Up

Not following up with leads or clients can create a perception of disinterest. Consistent and timely follow-ups are crucial for nurturing relationships and closing deals. Whether it is fear of rejection, or just being too busy and forgetting to follow, you need to remind yourself to consistently follow up with customer. Remember, customer are paid to meet salespeople!

4. Overpromising and Underdelivering

In an effort to close a sale, some salespeople may exaggerate the benefits of a product or service. This can lead to customer dissatisfaction,  damage trust and cause internal problems for your customer,  making it essential to set realistic expectations. It can also cause big problems for your colleagues in logistics, customer service and finance.

5. Lack of Preparation

B2B customers are more and more acting like B2C customers. They do their research and many times are much better prepared than the over confident salesperson. Going into meetings or calls without adequate preparation will lead to poor discussion and possibly loss of the sale. Research tells us that customers are also reducing the time they spend meeting salespeople (Korn Ferry). Successful salespeople invest time in researching their prospects and understanding their needs before engaging. The adage “being prepared, shows you care” can be a competitive advantage and accelerate a healthy customer image of you and your company. At ELAvate we use a pre call planner to guide salespeople to be better prepared for sales meetings.

6. Being Too Pushy

Aggressive sales tactics can alienate potential customers. Can you imagine yourself going to a “pushy doctor” who is only interested in operating on you, or selling you the latest medicine? Customers are turned off by pushy salespeople. They can smell you need to meet plan or get your commission. Instead, adopting a consultative approach that focuses on asking good questions, building trust, then “prescribing” solutions that meet customer needs. Think and act like a caring professional doctor – your customers will appreciate you.

7. Not Empathizing with Customer Issues and Problems

Most salespeople are focused on solving customer issues and problem solving. This intent is reasonable. What most salespeople miss is the link between the customer problem and emotions with your possible solution. The link is “empathizing” with the customer’s emotions around his or her problem and need. To borrow from John Maxwell, “You must touch the customer’s heart, before they give you their hand (the order!).” I learned this from in the field research  from AchieveGlobal that clearly states “salespeople who empathize or acknowledge customer needs double their chances of closing the sale compared to salespeople you just state product features and benefits.” I regularly coach and practice empathizing with my sales and service people teaching them the 5 ways to empathize.

8. Ignoring or Pushing Back on Feedback

Salespeople who dismiss constructive feedback from customers or colleagues miss valuable insights that could improve their approach. Embracing constructive criticism is vital for personal and professional growth. If you are going to prune your bad sales habits, you must be open to feedback from sales manager or the accountability partner who helps you prune!

9. Neglecting Your Health

Most salespeople are focused on meeting their sales targets. This may lead them to jumping into the “rat race” of neglecting the areas of their lives can give them better resilience and the emotional fuel to be a healthy marathon runner in the more and more competitive world of B2B sales. Yes, B2B sales career is a marathon, not a sprint. Some areas of pruning to get out of the rat race and run a marathon where you don’t kill yourself: Are you overweight? Do you have cholesterol or blood pressure problems? Do you ignore consistent exercise? Are you not getting enough restful sleep? Too much smoking, alcohol or sedatives? Are you limiting quality and quality time with your family and friends because you are too consumed with your sales job? What do you kids think about the time you spend with them? Do you have a healthy hobby to refresh yourself?  How healthy are you, really?

10. Neglecting Personal Development

Salespeople who stop learning and growing can become stagnant. What got you success in 2024, may not get you greater success in 2025. Continuous professional development through training, reading, and networking is essential for staying competitive. Plan for a learning, growing 2025 by constructing a regular, time bound, specific learning plan. You prune your bad habits, then fertilize yourself with learning new behaviors, attitudes, tools and processes that will yield a bountiful harvest of sales fruit in 2025! Top of Form

Sit down this weekend and decide how you are going to prune back your bad sales habits, who you can ask to keep you accountable, and with the vision to be more fruitful in 2025. Take action!

Michael J Griffin
BSc in Forestry (Yes, it’s true)
Founder and CEO of ELAvate
Global Sales Productivity Coach
michael.griffin@elavateglobal.com
+65-91194008 (WhatsApp)