How to improve Sales skills : 6 proven techniques

 


Sales is a fast-paced, competitive field. Sales professionals must learn how to improve sales skills in order to stay relevant, effective, and successful. In a blink of an eye, old sales strategies stop working, new ones are introduced, new competitors emerge, and similar products are released. By staying on your toes and learning how to improve sales skills, you can overcome these challenges and stay at the top of your industry.

No matter who you are, what company you work for, or what you sell, there’s always room for improvement.

Here are some steps you can take to improve your sales performance and ensure your survival in a dog-eat-dog world.

1. Research, Research, Research

Things change quickly in sales. The field is never stagnant. And you must stay on top of new sales trends, best practices, tools, technologies, and selling strategies and methods in order to keep up.

That means becoming an expert in your industry. Make it a priority to always research what’s new in sales, what’s passé, and what you should be doing to stay ahead.

If you don’t adapt with the times, your selling skills will quickly become outdated and ineffective. You must commit to changing your strategies when required. This is key to improvement.

2. Create Goals

Figure out which sales skills you need to improve, and set goals. If you want to get better at selling over the phone, the write down activity goals that you can control, such as calls per day or referrals per call, and work towards your goal. Then, measure and track your progress.

Creating goals can help you focus your attention and energize your action.

3. Work on Your Confidence

What if I were to tell you that you don’t actually need to improve sales skills themselves, you just need to improve your confidence? Many sales people use effective strategies and methods to close deals, but the problem lies in their confidence.

Buyers can see and feel your lack of confidence, and that doesn’t give them confidence in you. Not being sure of yourself can also lead to more selling mistakes, to sales slumps, and to other negative consequences.

When you work on improving your confidence levels and overcoming your fears, you’ll see that your skills will improve as well.

4. Try Out New Methods

There are virtually thousands of different sales strategies that you could try, from prospecting methods and closing strategies to presentation methods and negotiation strategies, and everything in between. If what you’re doing right now isn’t translating into much success and you want to improve your selling skills, try out new methods. Simple trial and error can help you find the right mix of strategies for your personality, your buyers, and your offerings.

5. Use Tools and Tech

There is a wealth of different sales tools and technologies on the market that can help you improve your sales performance. With a little bit of data and intelligence about your buyers and your sales process, you can gain the insights and visibility you need to successfully take your sales skills to the next level.

Plus, using sales tools and tech can eliminate many of the mundane and tedious tasks that take up all of your time, so you have more time to focus on getting better at your job.

6. Focus on the Customer’s Needs

When in doubt, focus on your customers’ needs. If you want to improve your sales pitch or presentation, customize it to your buyers’ pain points. If you want to get better at selling over the phone, focus the conversation on your customers’ wants, desires, and needs. If you want to learn how to improve sales skills, and I mean, pretty much any sales skills, all you have to do is make it about the buyer instead of yourself. Sometimes, that’s all you need to get the sale.

Tamer Elsagheer

Skillinside


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Make-Or-Break Career Skill No One Talks About

Image
It goes without saying that you have to be responsible and alert to succeed in your career, no matter what your career path is. You have to be reliable, of course, and you have to be a good team member. No one can really act surprised if they miss out on a promotion and their boss says "We all like you, Stan, but you have a tendency to let us down when it matters, and that's not something a supervisor can do. I gave the promotion to Anjali, because I can always rely on her in the clinch." There is another, critical career skill that makes or breaks careers and that we don't talk about as often as we should. It's a muscle that we don't grow just by getting older or by going to school or even by taking on more and more responsibility over time. It is possible to reach a ripe old age without growing this muscle, and it always a shame when that happens. At Human Workplace we call this must-have career muscle "Fast Learning." What does it mean...
Read more

22 Characteristics of High-Potential Employees

Image
  Even if your team is made up solely of supremely talented individuals, there are always a few employees who stand out from the pack.  According to the  Harvard Business Review ,  these high-potential employees  account for an average of 5% of any company’s workforce.  High-potential employees (HiPos) excel in their current roles, but they also possess the skills and knowledge necessary to thrive in managerial positions and senior roles, too. Importance of identifying top talent for employers High-potential employees need to know that you recognize their potential. In fact, a  recent study  showed that 77% of HiPos feel that being recognized as high-potential talent is important to them.  These workers want help in identifying a career path and they also want support in carving that path. For these reasons, it’s critical that managers identify HiPos early on in order to retain them and keep them engaged.  Employers who identify top tale...
Read more

Eight Entrepreneurs Share Their Best Sales Closing Technique

Image
Many people who work in sales face a lot of rejection, especially early in their careers. That’s why there’s no better feeling than closing the deal with a new prospect. As you learn and grow as a salesperson, you start to figure out the most effective techniques for moving a potential lead down the funnel and turning them into a paying customer. We asked members of   Young Entrepreneur Council   to share their best tips for closing a sale, along with anecdotes of how they’ve put it into practice. Here’s what they had to say. 1. Paint A Picture Starring The Customer   The best way to close a sale in my experience is to gather a great deal of information about a customer, tie that information to aspects of a particular product/service, then create a visual in the customer’s head of how implementing this product/service can benefit their lives. This was an extremely effective technique I found in one of my earliest jobs selling cable subscriptions. I would ask ...
Read more