If you are a sales rep and want to ensure you hit your numbers, you need to know a lot, from market expertise and product understanding to value propositions and messaging. This means you must grow the proper sales skills to ensure you can have meaningful conversations with each buyer you encounter.
At this point, sales readiness is also a crucial factor. With proper coaching and training that supports the development of critical sales skills, companies and organizations can ensure their sales representatives can close more and larger deals, all while making sure the time spent with buyers is spent well.
However, all this creates a new question – what skills are most important for your sales reps to master? While using the latest technology, such as route planning software, to help with sales is essential, other skills must be mastered, as well. Keep reading to learn what these essential skills are.
Great Communication
Effective communication skills are the foundation of building a meaningful relationship with your clients, setting expectations, and discussing (in a tactful manner) your buyer’s pain points. While this may seem obvious, it is essential to remember that today, communication is more than just speaking clearly and concisely.
Sales reps need writing and presentation capabilities to interact effectively through social media, email, during a video conference, or to speak with individuals in person. Quality salespeople also need to communicate effectively during the entire sales cycle, from the initial cold outreach to the follow-up and being able to move a new opportunity along.
Prospecting
All sales reps have experienced a rather poor sales prospecting experience. For example, the “spray and pray” approach to sales is one that does not sit well with most buyers.
If you want to ensure your prospecting efforts are effective, you need to develop a strategic approach to identify any new business opportunity. Once it is developed, make sure to work on it each day. This means developing the ability to research a potential buyer or buyers, conduct effective cold outreach, and to create new opportunities.
The Discovery Process
A sales rep needs to be able to ask prospects intelligent questions. This is the best way for them to identify what a buyer needs. They must also follow-up based on these needs.
Modern reps need to have a high level of understanding of any prospect’s current priorities, business challenges, and their company. To do this, they must ask the right, well-informed questions that will help them identify any pain points present, the desired outcome for the situation, and provide the organization with a better sense of the political hierarchy for the buyer.
If a sales rep is unable to uncover the right information during a discovery call, a peer learning strategy may be beneficial. With this, it is possible to document different tricks and tips for the discovery process from the A-players on the team and use them in the training materials that are available to all sales reps.
Business Acumen
It is important for a sales rep to use the available business-level information about a prospect, such as financial statements, to help move their conversation forward. This information should be considered carefully, and the pain points of the business should be drawn out of it. While this is a process that takes practice and skill, it is something that all sales reps must-do for success.
A quick tip that will help with this is to leverage any subject matter experts. This may include an experienced executive or member of the finance team. These individuals can help sales reps gain the expertise needed and can help create effective training content.
Making the Sale
When it comes to making a sale, it is essential to remember that, to be successful, sales reps need the proper skills and information. With the skills mentioned here, sales reps will be on their way to closing more deals than ever before.
