Sales is one of the most competitive departments in any business. As the people responsible for reaching out to customers and talking about the company’s products and services extensively, salespeople need to be knowledgeable about corporate brand strategy and have an in-depth understanding of every product or service the company offers.
Besides aligning your marketing efforts with your sales goals, you also need to ensure that your sales team is equipped with the necessary skills to perform their roles well. After all, sales define how your offerings fit into the market, drive cash flow, and deliver the business’ bottom line.
In this article, you’ll learn about the 9 most essential sales skills your team needs to win more loyal customers.
Table of contents
1. Product understanding
The first and foremost thing you must make sure anyone who holds a sales role in your company has is a thorough understanding of your product or service offerings.
Whether you’re a product-based firm selling F&B ingredients or a service-based firm offering leisure packages, your sales representatives must know the ins and outs of what you offer since they will be discussing these things in detail to prospective customers.
That said, very few things are more important than conducting product training among your salespeople. Besides the offering itself, you also need to train them in the different uses and benefits of the product or service to know how to present it in the best possible light.
That means they also need to know:
- How every product works
- The product’s value
- Its alternative uses
- Strongest and lesser-known features
Most importantly, they must communicate these things with brevity and clarity and enthuse customers into buying.
2. Strategic prospecting
Prospecting is one of the most critical skills sales reps need to learn.
Viable opportunities are identified efficiently in strategic prospecting. This means making use of different strategic approaches to seek potential clients and build relationships with them through:
- Email marketing
- Social selling
- Quality content creation
Those who can leverage this skill typically have a higher success rate in closing sales than people who still use old school tactics like referrals and cold calling.
Related Reading: Different Types of Prospecting Strategies for Sales People.
3. Time management
Every job requires a certain level of time management skill, but only a few need it as much as those in sales. After all, the expression “time is money” applies to this line of work more than any other type of job.
For companies, inefficient time use in sales is equivalent to lost revenue. So when a sales rep masters time management, they help the company spend more cost effectively.
To be successful in the role, a salesperson must figure out how to become their most efficient self. Whether it’s by using artificial intelligence to drive sales forecasting or activity capture tools to record customer journeys through the sales funnel, you and your sales team can find more ways to improve your time management skills.
4. Active listening
Ask any professional certified coach, and they’ll tell you that listening is just as critical as speaking. Communication is a two-way street, after all.
Active listening is even more crucial for sales reps. Though all of them are taught how to speak to prospective clients, only a few are trained to listen attentively.
Interestingly, a typical sales rep spends roughly 65 to 75 percent of their sales call speaking. Despite this, the fact remains that there is plenty of information salespeople can use while listening to prospects to close the sale faster and more efficiently.
From specific pain points to the details of a prospect’s current situation, a sales rep who listens can develop thoughtful follow-ups that could guide the conversation in their favor. In short, the more a salesperson knows about the situation, the better and faster they can provide a solution to their prospect’s needs.
Related Reading; 11 Effective Ways To Improve Your Sales in 2022.
5. Qualification questioning
Salespeople don’t immediately have the answers at the beginning of every conversation, making qualification questioning crucial at the discovery stage of prospecting.
For that very reason, qualification questioning goes hand-in-hand with active listening skills.
At this stage, sales reps perform a needs analysis where they gather information about their prospects by asking questions. This serves as the foundation of their knowledge about potential customers and their situation.
It is vital in ascertaining how the product or service being offered fits into the equation, in relation to factors such as:
- Budget expectations
- Authority
- Timeline
- Competition
- Buying process
The information gathered during qualification questioning allows the sales team to create a customized framework to nurture the lead throughout the buying journey.
6. Objection handling
While it’s impossible to prevent objections from cropping up, there is a way you can make sure that your sales team can handle the situation should these matters arise.
Objections can end the sales process abruptly, so make sure your team stays on their toes and is ready to face and handle difficult conversations.
Through coaching, you can ensure that your team members learn the importance of empathy while speaking and asking good questions as they dig deeper into the prospect’s concerns about your product or service. This will allow them to find a way to clarify the issue and guide the prospect into overcoming their objection.
7. Closing techniques
Your team’s efforts in prospecting would go to waste if they aren’t equipped with effective closing techniques. The moment a prospect makes the purchase and becomes a paying customer is the culminating point of the sales cycle.
Make sure that your team is ready to close each deal. Train them to identify the right moment to ask for a financial commitment by identifying patterns in sales data.
In some cases, your sales team would also need just the right amount of assertion to make the sale. Too little, and the prospect may push the closing date by weeks or even months. Too much, and they might feel too overwhelmed and decline altogether.
The key is having a good amount of data to analyze each sales situation and the instinct to identify the right moment to go for the closing.
8. Post-sale relationship building
A sales representative’s relationship with a buyer shouldn’t end the moment they make a sale. After all, there is still the possibility that a paying customer will continue to be loyal to the brand or company if they are well taken care of.
That means that success in sales also entails building trust and rapport with customers. People in sales should be there to provide continuous support and assistance to make sure customers stay happy with the product or service.
Post-sale relationship building also entails offering loyalty incentives, which can then lead to more business, referrals, and even possible upgrades.
Leadership
Not every sales representative has what it takes to become a sales manager, but consider investing in their growth and corporate leadership coaching if you spot anyone who shows potential.
A leader isn’t a leader just because they look and sound the part. Acting proudly in front of the crew isn’t the only thing that makes a ship’s captain the leader – it’s how they motivate, empower, and manage their people.
Leadership skills are essential in a sales team since it is part and parcel of what makes them effective in their job. This means the sales manager also needs to be trained with the right skills to become an effective leader.
After all, a sales manager’s job is to do everything they can to make each member of the sales team successful.
Earn Customer Loyalty With the Right Skills
Sales is an integral part of any business.
Make sure your team has what it takes to thrive in this highly competitive environment by equipping them with the right skills for the job.
Related Reading; The Top 10 Sales Books of All Time