eBusiness Weekly
Robert Gonye
This isn’t exactly revolutionary or insightful to point out, but selling skills are very important when it comes to selling skillfully — and if you want to be an adept and effective salesperson, you need to do exactly that.
So it’s always in your best interest to consistently learn, grow, and bolster your sales skillset.
Where should you start? What skills should you prioritise? What exercises can help you get there? And what are the most important themes to keep in mind when improving how you sell as we go into 2022?
It might sound obvious, but you can’t conduct successful sales efforts without having at least basic selling skills. You need to know how to source information on prospects, communicate with them effectively, and craft enticing value propositions if you want to make it in the field.
Covering all of those bases leans on your ability to nail some essential selling skills here’s a look at some of the most important ones every salesperson should have a grip on.
- Leading with empathy
Every sale should be inherently buyer-centric — a process where you, as a salesperson, take on a helpful, consultative role to help improve your prospect’s life or business with your product or service.
Corny as this might sound, the best salespeople don’t sell purely for the sake of selling — they sell because they believe their product or service is the best solution to fit their prospects’ needs and interests.
You can’t reach that frame of mind without demonstrating empathy — taking the time to consider your prospect’s circumstances, focusing on relationship building, and staying mindful of how your prospects are feeling to inform how you pace your sales efforts.
Ultimately, you need to be conscious of the fact that you’re engaging with real people, so always maintain a human element with every sale. You should want to solve for the prospect more than you want to sell to them.
- Staying true to
your sales process
Sales is both an art and a science, and effective sales efforts are the result of striking an appropriate balance between the two. So while you should be able to demonstrate some “artistic” finesse and think on your feet, your approach should be underscored by some “scientific” discipline.
Your organisation has a sales process in place for a reason. Very few — if any — successful companies set their salespeople loose and say, “Figure it out as you go”. If you want to consistently conduct efforts that deliver the results you’re looking for, you have to abide by some sort of structure.
Understand your organisation’s process, and stick to its steps — you can add your personal touch within its boundaries. Sales will always require some degree of direction, and that “direction” is generally a by-product of how well you can adhere to your sales process.
- Accurately depicting the purchasing process
Being able to set and meet reasonable expectations with buyers is central to building trust and establishing productive relationships — that starts with you being upfront about the nature of the purchasing process as a sale progresses.
Honesty and integrity won’t be lost on prospects. Like a number of other points on this list, this one rests on the value of sincerity and the merit of taking a consultative approach to selling. Again, every sale should revolve around helping the prospect — above all else.
If you mislead them about what the purchasing process looks like, what features they’ll have access to, or how much they’re ultimately going to pay for your offering, you’ll undermine your credibility and potentially lose out on a deal during the home stretch.
Make sure you can back up every promise you make, and be as clear as possible about what they’re getting at the price point they purchase at. If you don’t, you run the risk of bringing on a disgruntled customer that will churn quickly, vocalise their frustrations, and hurt your reputation down the line.
- Conducting effective
buyer research
You can’t appeal to a buyer if you have no idea who they are, what they do, and what their business needs might be. If you want to successfully engage with a prospect, you need to have most — if not all — of those factors drilled down.
That starts with conducting extensive buyer research, and the best salespeople know what to look for, where to look for it, and how to effectively analyse those findings. Pore through your prospect’s company website. Learn everything you can about what their business does.
Try to find insight into how their organisation is performing. Familiarise yourself with its industry, so you can better understand its place in its competitive landscape. See if you can find out which solutions it’s currently leveraging.
Do some research on the specific contact you’ll be speaking with. What’s their background like? What do they do at their company? Can you identify any interests they might have to help you build rapport?
Try to address as many angles as possible here. Put together a holistic picture of your prospect and their business, and start to tailor your communication to best connect with them — whether that be through something like a personalised gift, some industry-specific insight, or any other way you can think of to let them know you’re locked in on their interests.
- Developing extensive
product knowledge
You can’t sell a product or service effectively if you don’t know it inside and out. Understanding everything there is to understand about your offering informs other key elements of your sales efforts.
You can’t anticipate or handle objections if you don’t know the issues prospects consistently raise about your product or service’s functionality. You can’t structure an effective value proposition if you don’t know what kind of value your product or service can offer. You can’t differentiate yourself from your competitors if you don’t know the features your offering has that theirs don’t.
Take the time to thoroughly study your product or service. Know what makes it an exceptional option and where it might lag behind competitors. Know who stands to gain the most from it. Know what it costs and why it costs that much. Know its every last feature, bell, and whistle.
- Being a compelling storyteller
Communication with prospects needs to be engaging if it’s going to be effective. You want your buyer to have a personal stake in the sale — and using compelling storytelling to shape your pitches, presentations, and other correspondence with them helps that case.
Know some relevant case studies front to back — and leverage those stories to help your prospect imagine how they would use your product or service. Be sure to cover elements like character, context, conflict, and an ultimate resolution.
- Demonstrating potential return on investment
You need to paint a clear, persuasive, and believable picture of the results a purchase will yield when engaging with prospects. If you’re selling expensive software with a traditionally lengthy implementation period, be sure to convey the hard benefits of making that kind of investment of time and capital.
Robert Gonye is a business growth expert and influencer. A sales strategist and author of “Sales Made Simple workbook on winning new business”. He writes in his capacity. The views given herein are solely for information purposes. [email protected]; WhatsApp: 0715023256
