Great salesperson possesses numerous skills which make them effective and efficient. Current uncertainty in the economy has made selling more challenging with prospects, and customers also going through a tough time. So instead of focussing more on selling, sales teams across the globe are now focussing on building strong relationships with customers and prospects. This calls for a salesperson to maintain a sales skill set that goes beyond the tool expertise (Quoting, CRM, CLM) and focusses more on enhancing the sales soft skills.
Be on top of your game
Here are some sales skills listed to focus on and relevant resources and courses to help you work your way through them.
Prospecting
Sales prospecting is a critical part of the sales process. It helps you build the pipeline of potential customers. But with a dramatic shift in customer behavior during the last few months has made the sales teams to relook their prospecting strategies. For prospecting to be effective amidst the pandemic, salespeople need to develop specific approaches depending on i) industry they belong to and how severely it’s impacted, or ii) the region that they were operational in.
Active listening
Sales teams are the eyes and ears of any business. Interaction of a salesperson with existing customers and prospects gives a broader view of the market and helps in identifying trends or changes in customer behavior. Active listening presents you with insights that allow you to put yourself in your customer’s shoes and grasp a broader view of the impact of the current situation. This will ensue discussions to help mitigate the impact on business and support customers in the best way possible.
Business acumen
This is one sales skill that you need now more than ever. A salesperson should be skillful enough to use business-level information (like reading a financial statement) to navigate sales conversations around relevant pain points or understand trends and patterns that affect customers and take timely and judicious decisions. With good business acumen, you can chase the right prospect and expect conclusive results (in terms of conversion from prospect to customer)
Time management and planning
It is critical that a day is planned, managed, and utilized in the best possible way. Every salesperson gets the same number of hours to work. Setting clear goals for yourself could be a good start and then prioritizing your tasks as per the requirements. An untimely response or delay in sharing critical customer documents can result in businesses losing deals. Having a sorted time-table and calender can make the overall working experience more convenient and easy to manage.
Alternatively, you can also use document automation tools like Revv that comes with features like centralized repository, 1000+ legally vetted templates, eSignature, native APIs and Zapier integrations and more.
Increased and better communication
Strong and effective communications are the foundations for building a long-lasting relationship. How you communicate with your customer is very critical. The tonality of your sales emails should be and can be adjusted as per the ask in any situation.
With the on-going pandemic situation, businesses have been severely impacted. So it’s important that you are being considerate of the situation by being empathetic and not tone-deaf when approaching prospects and customers. The way you communicate can be a make or break factor in establishing a trustworthy relationship with your customers.
This holds true even for internal communication.
Collaboration had become one of the major challenges of any organization, especially now. While the whole idea of using messaging platforms was to lessen email communication, DMS and messages can become a distraction or even result in workplace anxiety.
So, what are your alternatives? Keep messages brief. Use @mentions or notes wherever possible. Set up automated workflow automation wherever possible. And, finally, set the right expectations especially if you are working on different time zones.
Resources to refer
- Best sales training program – From prospecting to insight selling, several affordable courses for you to choose from!
- Cold email prospecting – Watch the webinar on a cold email training for B2B sales teams and entrepreneurs.
- Sales Webinars – Lists of multiple sales reports, documents, and webinars to choose from.
- The ultimate guide to sales prospecting – A report basic tips and tricks to succeed at prospecting
- Cognitive reframing – Using cognitive behavior to steer through the coronavirus pandemic
Holding onto these sales skills is critical for a salesperson. They play a key role in structuring their work. It’s skills like these that help you mold with any crisis situation and enable you to work while being compliant with the crisis requirement. The coronavirus outbreak has brought changes in customer buying behavior. Now is the time to be proactive by brushing up your skills and focus on the shifting customer needs, priorities, and approach to risk alleviation to design your next steps as a business. Sales and service teams should have the right techniques and priorities in place to bring useful insight into the new landscape to influence their customers and build long trust for the long term in these uncertain times.
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