Do your web pages, sales letters or personal presentations include subtle distractions that unnecessarily cause you to lose sales?

Sometimes prospective customers get distracted during selling process by outside interruptions. You cannot control those. But many sales-killing distractions are caused by what you put in your web pages and other sales messages ...or by what you say in your personal presentations.

Here are 3 unnecessary distractions you may be creating that sabotage your sales - and how you can avoid them:

1. Requiring Customers to Make Unnecessary Decisions

Design your selling process so prospects do not have to make unnecessary decisions.

Some prospects have difficulty making a clear decision when they have several options. They often react by procrastinating and never making a decision ...and you lose sale you already made.

Tip: Promote only one product or service at a time. You can develop separate promotions for each product or service you sell. You can even combine several products and services into one package. But always limit your prospect's buying decision to "yes" or "no". Don't distract them with a "which one" decision.

2. Diverting Your Customer's Attention to Something Else

Don't include anything in your selling procedure that can divert attention away from your selling process.

For example, I often see sales oriented web pages that provide clickable links to other web sites with testimonials. Why would any marketer want to send prospective customers to another web site in middle of their presentation?

The best way to do this is to practice what any businessperson knows: know your competition. The most beneficial thing you can do is to study what they are doing to attract customers.

Go online, do a search, pull up web sites of your competition, and start taking notes. Here are some things to look for.

* What do you like about their web site? * How can they improve upon it? * Is it user-friendly and easy to understand? * Is it too wordy or complicated? * Could someone browsing this web site learn quickly what this business actually does? * Does their web site move too slowly, due to an over-emphasis on graphics that sacrifices actual message?

With your notes, you can begin to set up key points that you feel your target audience needs to know about your product or service, and why it will benefit them to do business with you.

Look at these different web sites and read headline.

* Does it draw you in? * Do you care to read more? * Do you feel intrigued, or more than a little confused?

If you find one you like, there is nothing wrong with re-wording it to fit your business. Remember that we are talking about imitation, not plagiarism.