As we are approaching the end of the year, it is time for you to ask yourself: Are you training your sales team for better efficiency and productivity? Are they confident in their skills and ability to close the deals?
Sales and sales training is now more than just selling your products; it is more about establishing a connection with the audience. So, are your sales executives able to establish connections with the customers?
Excellence criteria for sales!
1. Negotiation
Negotiation is an important part of your sales process. So, are your salespeople confident enough to make good negotiations? The salespeople communicate with the CEO and other high-ranking officials, which may be intimidating for them. When people think of negotiation, most of them associate it with complex talks and uncomfortable discussions. But it doesn’t have to be like that.
Negotiation is an art, and if it is excelled at, it can give you tremendous results. Here are some of the negotiation principles that you should keep in mind:
- Do not treat people as problems
- Focus on the interests of the people
- Give options for mutual benefits so the reasons look more credible
2. Managing stress
Sales jobs are quite stressful; there are always target issues and challenges to getting better ROI. So, how are you coping with your stress now? Do you have certain practices that help you reduce stress and become more productive?
To be more productive and also more successful, see how you can reduce stress by various methods:
- Connect
Connect more with your clients to learn about what they require. You may be stressed, wondering if you have taken all the questions and requests into consideration. If you have got all topics covered to make the final deal. To avoid these stressful situations, you need to connect with your audience better.
- Leave the self-depreciation
You must have lost some of the deals or didn’t close the deal you expected, but that does not mean you are not capable of getting customers. Do not doubt your capabilities, and try to become better with more skills and constantly upgrade yourself.
- Get support
If you have a good team, you are already lucky, but if you are lacking a team, you can make one that will you close better deals. You can take help from your peers to build better relationships with customers and also understand things that you do not know. This method of social learning is now being utilized by various organizations to enhance employee productivity.
6. Resolving conflicts and handling situations
Dealing with conflicts and customers can be an extremely daunting situation for you. And how you deal with these situations determines how good a salesperson you are. You cannot avoid conflicts completely, but you can handle them better than before.
These are a few things you should keep in mind to better handle the situation:
- Drop your ego
No issue can be resolved when two people have an ego, so if you want to resolve the issue and also improve your brand image, you must not have any type of ego.
- Be honest
You cannot always be right, and it’s in human nature to make mistakes. Hence, make sure if you make any mistake you own up to it as well.
- It’s now about winning
While on a sales call, it’s not about winning; it’s about helping people. Your prospects need solutions from you, not someone who will be competitive and always try to win.
Hard skills and product knowledge are important for being an effective salesperson, but it is also important to incorporate soft skills for your own benefit. Enhancing your soft skills alongside your core skills will help you build a better experience for your customers.
Let us talk about some of the hard and soft skills you require to excel as a salesperson:
Hard skills for your sales team
1. Product knowledge
2. Policy knowledge
3. Sales process proficiency
- Prospecting
- Lead qualification
- Research
- Pitch
- Object handling
- Closing deal
4. Communication skills
5. Research skills
Soft skills you may include
1. Negotiation skills
2. Relationship-building skills
3. Active listening skills
4. Time management
5. Critical and logical thinking
6. How can you help your sales executives?
Now the question is, as an organization, how can you help your employees be better at closing deals? Along with the employees, it is also your responsibility to help your employees upskill themselves.
Here are a few tips that you can follow to help your employees better themselves:
- Provide one-on-one coaching to your employees
- Encourage your employees to learn with engaging courses
- Use technology to deploy your courses such as LMS; you can track the course progress as well.
- Make a consistent sales process
- Establish a good culture for your employees
- Understand the gaps in your sales team and bridge them with appropriate resources.
- Inspire your team and encourage their good performance
- You can encourage healthy competition among your sales team.
- Help your sales team to build effective programs for sales
- Give them your feedback so they know where they are lagging
- Create interactive cohort courses using LMS for them to learn better.
The sales team is the only department in your organization, that brings revenue to the company. Rest; all the departments burn the cash.
Efficient sales executives are highly valued in any organization. Hence, make sure you help your employees use their utmost potential to bring in more business.
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