Are bad sales habits hindering your team’s success? CMO Council reports that every year $1 trillion dollars are lost due to lost productivity and poorly managed leads. That’s a lot of money down the drain. Though your team may need some more advanced training, these 7 mistakes can help your team take a step in the right direction to improvement. Make sure your SDRs stay away from these seven deadly sales habits.

1. Forgetting to follow up with prospects

Whether a prospect tells you to follow up next week, next month, or 6 months from now, it is important that you do not let them slip through the cracks of your pipeline. Set yourself a reminder in your calendar, as well as a task both a week before the scheduled follow up AND the day of, so you don’t forget. If you don’t follow up at the appropriate time, you may have missed out on a potential opportunity with a customer.

2. Being lazy when logging notes and activity

Make sure you write down everything and anything after a conversation with a prospect. This includes referrals, qualifying information, a day and time to follow up, etc. If you do not log your call notes, the next time you go to speak with that person, you will have no clue where the conversation left off. A best practice to counter this is to actively take notes while on a call. Even if they are fragments or chicken scratch, you can formulate a more formal summary of your notes after the call.

3. Spelling and grammar errors

This may seem silly, but spell check exists for a reason! Read an email out loud to yourself before sending it, especially if it is going to someone in the C-level suite. Don’t blow an opportunity to get a meeting by calling them the wrong name, spelling the company name wrong, or writing an email entirely in run-on sentences.

Download The Sales Development Messaging Toolkit for a messaging refresher.

4. Failure to acknowledge time zones

You may be on your second cup of coffee for the morning, however a prospect on the west coast may still be sleeping! Pay attention to where you are calling, and make sure you do not wake anyone up. In addition to being mindful of time zones, make sure that when you schedule appointments with prospects that you coordinate time zones between your sales rep, the prospect, and yourself. It would suck if the prospect hops on the call and no one is there or vice versa.

5. Forgetting to reschedule meetings

If your prospect does not show up for the meeting you booked with your closing rep, be sure to reschedule as soon as possible! Forgetting to reschedule a meeting is like throwing the opportunity down the drain. Sometimes things do come up (family emergencies, company meetings, etc.) But it is YOUR responsibility to get back in touch with the prospect to reschedule for your team.

6. Reading off of a script (or sounding generally monotonous)

If you use a sales script, don’t get in the habit of reading off of it word for word. Scripts are great when getting acclimated with new campaigns, however they are meant to guide the conversation, not dictate it. If you are provided with a script, make it your own so that you don’t sound monotonous.

7. Messy sales development process and technology

Make sure you are keeping your prospect relationship management platform organized. If a contact is no longer with the target account you are working to break into, make sure this is noted so you don’t waste time calling or emailing them again. Updating lead statuses are essential to maximizing your time as an SDR. If you’re working out of a messy, outdated database you are only making your job harder for yourself.

If you realize you fall into any of the categories above, don’t worry – it’s not too late! Shake off these seven deadly sales habits so you can not only improve your sales efforts, but also ensure you are not putting your team or campaign in jeopardy.