Five core sales skills to master to help you improve any selling activity. Hello and welcome to this quick video lesson on some core sales skills. Whether you are an experienced salesperson or just starting out in your career, mastering these skills will help you improve your performance and achieve your sales goals.
Skilled salespeople can be defined as those who become market experts, researchers and have a keen interest in the customers business and needs. They know that selling a product or service is secondary to understanding their challenges. In digitally enabled selling, a salesperson has to wear many hats, meaning they need a range of sales skills to call upon. Whether they play the role of consultant, negotiator, enabler, or challenger, it’s all about what the customer wants to achieve if they were to make a buying decision. Skilled salespeople always make it a priority is to build a strong channels of communication with their customers.
Did you know that 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up?
The Core Sales Skills To Master
The first skill to focus on is active listening. According to a study by HubSpot, active listening is the most important sales skill. It helps build trust and rapport with prospects. This means paying close attention to what your prospect is saying, and not just waiting for your turn to speak. When you actively listen, you will be able to identify their needs, concerns, and motivations. and then tailor your sales pitch accordingly. Active listening includes being empathetic. The skill to assure customers that you have the capability and proof to help them achieve their requirements. This requires you to place yourself in their shoes, listen to them intently, and acknowledge their pain points.
Second on the core sales skills list is Questioning. Effective questioning helps uncover customer needs and pain points. Ask questions that help you uncover needs and desires, that motivates a customer to invest in learning more. Unless you ask targeted questions, you will not be able to uncover those needs and desires, or present your product or service, as a solution to them.
Third on the list is Storytelling. Humans find stories compelling in a way that a simple presentation of the facts, often cannot match. Telling stories helps create an emotional connection with prospects. Stories with emotion can significantly change your desired outcome. You may have amazing verbal skills, but you can very easily fail as a storyteller because in oral communication, a lot also depends on the non-verbal aspects of communication and often, what you don’t say is of equal importance to what you do say. Communicating to others is more complex. It’s harder because we have to actively work to understand them. What compels people to do the things they do? When we can identify our audience’s motivations and appeal to them, we can gain their attention and drive the action we seek. In other words, it’s by being thoughtful about those we are communicating to that we can get our own needs met.
Fourth on the list of core sales skills is objections. Sales objections are inevitable, but effective handling can turn them into opportunities. Successful salespeople see objections as an opportunity to respond. The customer may not have fully understood your original positioning, so this is your chance to offer clarity. Also, it’s about hearing their concerns, and to respond to them with empathy. No matter how great your product or service is, there will always be objections to overcome. Rather than trying to argue with your prospect, it is better to acknowledge their concerns and provide solutions that address them. This will show that you value their opinion and are committed to finding the best solution for their needs. Just as the sales process has multiple steps and you are required to make multiple requests to advance your deals through the process, objections come in multiple forms and at different points along that path. Facing these roadblocks and getting past them, at each point on the sales process journey, is the key to getting in the door, shortening the sales cycle, increasing pipeline velocity, avoiding stalled deals, and, of course, closing the sale.
The fifth core sales skill is Closing. Closing is the ultimate goal of any sales interaction. Done correctly, it’s more about confirming a sale rather than closing. The ability to gain commitment from a customer to buy a product or service, requires a combination of knowledge, empathy, and value building skills. Closing is not an event but is a continuous process during your sales conversations. Always be asking for a series of yes commitments. Fear of closing: For many salespeople it’s not the lack of a good closing line; those are a dime a dozen. It’s the confidence, the mindset, the conviction that are often lacking. So, , you should be looking for opportunities to ask for the sale, right from that first conversation.
According to a survey by Salesforce, top-performing salespeople are 10 times more likely to be great closers.
Bonus Core Sales Skills To Learn
This sales skill is building rapport. People buy from people they like, so it is essential to establish a connection with your prospect. Find common ground, ask questions about their interests or hobbies, and show genuine interest in what they have to say. Building rapport will make it easier to gain their trust and ultimately close the sale.
Never forget the importance of product knowledge as part of core sales skills. You need to know your product inside and out to be able to explain its features and benefits in a way that resonates with your prospect. In your sales training, make sure you have all the information you need and are prepared to answer any questions they may have.
In summary, the five core sales skills that you need to master are active listening, questioning, storytelling, handling objections and closing. By focusing on these skills, you will be able to improve your sales performance and achieve your goals. Thank you for watching, and good luck with your sales endeavours!
Source: Five Core Sales Skills To Master – The Digital Sales Institute
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