My mom always told me that I should never get into a profession where I would need to sell something!
I was an introvert, I was shy, softspoken and never really liked to mix in a group of people.
How could I become an expert saleswoman?
Years later, as fate would have it, I did my MBA in Sales and Marketing. (Finance was never my cup of tea, HR – I did not want to be one, and so Sales and Marketing was the option I had at that time). So, I was officially and professionally into sales and marketing.
My degree didn’t change my nature – I was still shy, softspoken and sensitive.
Strong Communication Skills – Must for a Career in Sales
Yes, we all know that and in our MBA course we learnt more about the importance and impact of strong communication.
I knew I had to improve my selling skills or rather my communication skills.
Selling skills are nothing but refined and tactful communication skills which I knew I did not have.
Targets – Numbers That Would Define my Capability
So, just as all salespeople know, targets are an integral part of selling. Your success and failure are defined by how well you are meeting your target. With the right sales skills, I knew there would be meaningful conversations and that would result in sales.
Yes, we learnt about the important strategy – sales readiness. Our brief internship in small companies did provide us an overview of the critical sales skills needed for success.
But – is everything that easy?
For me it wasn’t. I decided to go the systematic way. I decided to master the most important and critical skills that every salesperson should master.
In sales and marketing, one needs to have strong communication skills. These are considered as the foundation of meaningful relationships with clients.
It is about being tactical and discussing the pain points of the clients and meeting the clients’ expectations. Thus, whenever it is about sales, it is all about communication.
Many people make this mistake – they do not spend much time knowing more about the product. Unless you are sure about the product, how are you going to sell it?
If you do not know about the key features of the products, their benefits and other details, how are you going to convince your buyers?
If you are selling a product, you should know everything about it. Once you know everything about the product you can recommend it to others. Buyers are always ready to know more about newly launched products and why they should buy them.
Most top salespeople can build excellent sales rapport with their clients.
Take time to know the problems faced by the customers and how your product can help in alleviating the problems.
During the initial call, it is crucial to ask some meaningful questions so that the customer realizes that you are interested in the product.
Salespeople are excellent problem solvers.
They seem to have a solution to almost all problems. Their primary goal is to close a deal and for this, they usually try to solve all problems of their customers.
They solve problems directly in their presence. They often offer phone assistance and at times proactively help their customers. These are the skills of some of the top salesmen.
If you wish to be a salesman, you need to have strong business acumen – a mindset for business.
In case you feel, you lack it, do not worry – you can make plans to focus and then improve it. With strong product knowledge and expertise, it gets easier to focus on strategies and understand the business.
Those with strong Business acumen always succeed as salesman.
This is one skill which you need to excel.
How would it feel if your prospect signs the contract immediately after being convinced by you? Truly it feels great. However, deals do not always work so easily. Prospects try to get a good deal, and this is when the negotiation starts.
One of the critical skills needed is demonstrating about a project. Product demonstration is something that needs to be done with care, caution, conviction, and great confidence.
No matter what the product is, you must ensure that your prospects go through an easy demonstration. They understand how to use the product or how the service is going to benefit them. This is why it is said over and over again that salesmen should have complete knowledge about the product.
During the sales demonstration, the customer often comes up with a number of questions. Remember, all these questions might not always be easy to answer or straightforward. They require in-depth knowledge and understanding.
It is recommended to go practice demonstration of a product before the product is explained to the customer.
Unless you have strong relationship building skills with your clients, you cannot survive in the industry. Relationship building is especially essential for all those who are involved in the selling of B2B goods or goods that are premium quality.
Buyers always look forward to building trust and relationships when they look forward to cultivating meaningful relations. Thus, if you wish to be an excellent salesperson, you need to have great relationship building tactics.
When you choose to reach to your customers, you will realize that most of your customers will accept the meeting request. This is one of the reasons why prospecting is so critical.
For any successful prospecting, you need to work hard for it. This is all excellent communication, good researching skills, communication and so on. Thus, always focus on qualified leads and you will do well.
It gets quite tempting for salespeople to focus just on hitting their personal goals. But remember that sales is teamwork where collaboration plays an incredible role in the sales process. It is the duty of the sales professionals to ensure that there is total collaboration.
The rep might have to work on different aspects. It might be focused on collaborating with different prospects so that an agreement is reached that is beneficial for all. Salespeople should always be flexible and have great convincing powers so that they can reach their business goals whenever they want.
It is the age of social media and there are several online platforms that can help in achieving sales. Social selling involves connecting with probable buyers with the help of various social media platforms.
This is extremely important that social selling is done properly. If this is not done properly, it might impact the credibility of the business. Social selling does not mean bombarding the social media accounts of potential buyers with promotional posts or sales material.
No one likes too much advertisement. Instead, efforts should be made so that the social media profiles of the sales rep is optimized that will work to attract customers.
Once the demonstration is done and the call made, you cannot afford to forget your customer. You must stay in touch with them and keep inspiring them to complete their purchase.
In fact, if you do not follow up with your prospects you might be actually sabotaging all your chances of succeeding. Thus, the salesperson should refine all their follow-up skills which is the last tip of successful sales.
However, one needs to be careful. You should follow up your clients all
These were some of the most important selling skills which individuals need to have for a successful career in sales.
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