Introduction
Every salesperson wants to find more prospects and close more deals. But this path isn’t easy always, as it is a combination of quality of the product, sales skills, patience and also luck. But what skills specifically do you need to be a successful salesperson?
Not Sure?
That’s why I’ve developed this list of top 10 vital sales skills that every salesperson must master to find success.
List of Top Sales Skills
1. Relationship Building
2. Time Management
3. Storytelling
4. Critical Thinking / Problem Solving
5. Product Knowledge
6. Business Communication
7. Client Engagement
8. Active Listening
9 . Empathetic
10. Negotiation
1. Relationship Building
The ability to engage with other people, build long-term relationships would benefit a salesperson to expand their network. Building relationships involves trust, rapport, and a genuine desire to help other people. This trust and rapport could help a salesperson to engage with their clients and sell the product or service in an easy manner.
2. Time Management
Time management is the process of organizing how to divide your time between specific activities. The salesperson usually work with something more precious than selling a product .i.e time- so they should have proper time management skills such as
- Planning.
- Decision making and prioritization.
- Setting boundaries and saying no.
- Delegating and outsourcing tasks.
- Building a system and diligently following it.
Having these skills might improve productivity and cost-efficiency, creating the environment needed for high performance.
3. Storytelling
A salesperson should be a true storyteller as this process involves not only featuring your product but also convincing customers that these features will solve their problems in some significant way.
Here are the three main storytelling skills all salespeople need to build :
- Have a great story
- Tell a great story
- Integrate a great story
- The end result?
Let us look at the below image, which showcases “ how storytelling works”
4. Critical Thinking / Problem Solving
Problem-solving and critical thinking refers to the ability to use knowledge and facts to effectively solve problems. Critical thinking is an important skill for any salespeople as it helps you evaluate situations with greater attention to detail.
Here are a few examples where critical thinking counts in selling.
- Achieving sales quotas.
- Finding ways to gain prospects’ attention.
- Conducting efficient discovery meetings.
- Linking prospect needs to your solutions.
- Negotiating terms to close the sale.
5. Product Knowledge
Clear product knowledge is an important sales skill. It is integral for sales personnel to understand the product they are selling and its features. If a customer catches you off guard with a question you don’t understand, they may question the integrity of the product. You should know your company’s products inside and out before having your first conversation with any prospect or customer.
Why product knowledge is imperative for sales success?
- Product knowledge gives us the satisfaction of being experts.
- Product knowledge allows us to speak with confidence around other experts.
- Product knowledge helps you respond to any objections properly.
- Product knowledge lets you understand the competition better.
- Product knowledge gives you self-assurance.
- Product knowledge gives your prospects confidence in you.
- Product knowledge helps you close more sales.
6. Business Communication
Salespeople are communicators. The better you are at communicating, the easier this job is going to be. Good communication is crucial to sales success which helps you to make a sale unless you’ve demonstrated value to a prospect or unless you’ve understood their problems and devised to solve them.
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8 Effective Communication Skills for Salespeople
- Make sure you’re speaking the same “language”
- Watch your body language
- Know when to listen
- Be as clear as possible
- Do not lie!
- Research constantly
- Give them “space”
- Know how to greet and how to say goodbye
7. Client Engagement
Client Engagement Skills is about mastering a set of behaviours that put your customers identify you as a trusted business partner this also helps in developing strategic long-term customer relationships. For high-performing sales professionals, maintaining excellent client engagement is an art.
Key Components for Client Engagement
- Listening.
- Action using creating problem-solving.
- Teamwork in a culture of respect and integrity.
- Health and wellbeing.
- Continuous learning and development.
- Coaching and mentoring.
8. Active Listening
When you’re trying to sell a product and are focused on hitting your sales targets, it can be tempting to talk their ears off until they agree. Unfortunately, many salespeople still do this.
Don’t do this.
Instead, check out these five key active listening techniques you can use:
- Pay Attention.
- Show That You’re Listening.
- Provide Feedback.
- Defer Judgment.
- Respond Appropriately.
More about Active Listening
9 . Empathetic
Empathy refers to a person’s ability to understand and share another person’s emotional experiences this should happen naturally for every salesperson, but it’s even more powerful if you train it as a skill. When you’re talking to prospects, you need to be able to fully understand their feelings and mirror those feelings.
The three types of empathy are:
- Cognitive empathy is being aware of the emotional state of another person.
- Emotional empathy is engaging with and sharing those emotions.
- Compassionate empathy involves taking action to support other people.
10. Negotiation
Negotiation is a combination of logic and emotion with qualities that allow a dialogue between two or more people with the primary aim of negotiating to help settle differences which Salespeople must have.
Real-World Sales Negotiation Skills Your Reps Need Now
- Talk to the Right People. …
- Establish the Customer’s Pain. …
- Build the Relationship. …
- Quantify the Value. …
- Know Your Bottom Line. …
- Stay Calm and Act Like a Partner. …
- Listen to What the Prospect Really Wants. …
- Look for Alternatives.
How to Improve Your Sales Skills?
- Introspection. To become a successful salesperson, you need to understand your areas of weakness and be honest with yourself about areas where you lack confidence; That’s why the first step to improving your sales skills is introspection. This is a powerful source of inspiration if you’re genuinely ambitious in developing yourself.
- Mentoring. No matter how experienced you are, find someone who could mentor you, and review your work.
- Experimentation. If you do the same thing over and again, you won’t get much exposure. If you want to accelerate your skill development, try out different experiments with new tools and different techniques.
Is a sales management course right for me?
Conclusion
Sales is a highly competitive field no matter what, you’re not going to learn these sales skills overnight, it takes years to establish yourself and improve your sales knowledge. Identify your sales skills to learn that will help you to advance in your career and get you to the next success milestone. Don’t try to rush the process; look for new opportunities to better yourself when you can. In the meantime, you can get a better perspective on sales with these Case Studies and prepare for your next sales interview.
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