No one is born as a salesperson. Selling is a skill that can be taught, learned and practised.
While the best salespeople may make it look easy, it’s only a matter of practice and iteration. All good salespeople have spent countless hours honing their sales skills.
Now, to help the beginner salespeople, as well as everyone who wants to become a better salesperson, we’ve written this article that presents the best sales tips that you can use in your everyday work.
Keep reading to find the best sales tips that will help you succeed as a salesperson.
Set your goals and objectives
If you’re only starting your career in sales, you will first need to set up clear, measurable goals and objectives. This is important because it will help you measure your performance against clearly defined goals.
In case you’re unsure how to set goals for yourself, consider the following questions:
- How many sales do you need to make to outperform the average salesperson in your company?
- How much revenue do you need to bring to your company per month?
- How many customers and leads to you need to create to generate the necessary revenue?
Once you answer these questions, you will have a better overview of what you need to do to succeed in your company. Keep in mind that it’s important to be realistic here. Don’t set up goals that are impossible to reach.
Similarly, make sure that you define your goals precisely and transparently. Vague objectives serve no purpose and make it hard for you to track your own progress and performance.
Identify your leads and prospects
Most inexperienced salespeople spend hours calling up people and getting rejected before they’re even able to start their sales pitch. This is because their call lists typically include all sorts of people, from all walks of life.
To avoid wasting time on unqualified leads, you will need to identify who your ideal customer is. Then, you will need to research each prospect and compare them to your ideal buyer persona.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persona_(user_experience)
If there are no similarities between the two personas, you’re most likely wasting time. When you filter out the unqualified leads, you will not only improve your conversion rate, but you will also have a much more productive conversation with your prospects.
Locate your prospect’s pains
To become a successful salesperson, you will need to learn to identify and locate the prospect’s pains. You need to understand what is troubling their company and what resources they can allocate to solving their problems.
This means that you will need to research your prospect before starting the sales process, but it also means that you will need to probe them during your conversation.
During the conversation, you should pose open-ended questions that will motivate your prospect to speak. For example, ask them what areas of their business they think can be improved.
You will need to build up trust and allow the prospect to communicate their issues to you. After the sale, provide your new customer with all the help and support they need to make sure they stay with your company for as long as possible.
Measure everything
As the heading suggests, measure everything that is measurable.
This will help you keep track of what you’re doing and what you can do to further improve your sales process. Further, it will help you understand how close you actually are to meeting your objectives.
If necessary, don’t hesitate to purchase and use an analytics tool or a program to develop unique metrics that will allow you to follow your performance more closely.
Learn from your colleagues
There is no shame in admitting someone is better than you. If you notice that a colleague is consistently performing better than you and your peers, approach them for advice. Better yet, ask to listen in on a few of their calls and take notes. Try to break down everything that they say and do to keep the prospected talking.
Later, you can analyze your notes and compare it with your own sales script to see the potential areas of improvement.
What’s more, you can conduct call reviews and ask the more senior colleagues to provide feedback on your calls. Simply getting a different perspective on your call can bring unexpected benefits.
Naturally, this won’t bring instant results, but if you persist and repeat the process over a longer period of time, you’re sure to advance your career as a salesperson.
Understand that the sale is a process
Arguably, this is one of the most important sales tips for novice salespeople.
Sales is a process. To close down a sale, you will need to establish the needs of your prospect and develop interest in your product. You will need to address the weak points in the prospect’s organization and specify a timeline to sell.
However, all of this is subject to change, depending on the product or service that you’re selling.
While it’s essential that you understand that sales is a process, it’s equally important that you understand that sales is not a strictly defined process, meaning it’s always changing and evolving.
If you’re unsure about the specifics of your company’s sales process, it’s best to request a meeting with your manager, who will guide you through it.
Are you tired of all the tips and just need a bit of inspiration to get back to sales? Check out our best sales quotes!