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Sales management

How Can You Become a Good Sales Rep?

8 min read · Listen

If you want to learn how to be a good salesperson, we recommend that you pay close attention to all of these qualities and business skills that will help you achieve great success in your sales. 
Many successful sales professionals have noticed that at the beginning they were missing the right sales techniques to apply, and furthermore, stress, shyness or lack of training dominated them. Then, one day, these professionals stopped looking for excuses, started building their confidence and studying new sales strategies. They began to gain more and more customers and managed to become experts in the sector. 

Today we’re going to look at these useful business qualities and skills to learn how to be a good salesperson. They will be really easy to apply and you will get better results with each sale thanks to them. 

Before we begin, we must remember that quality and competence are two different terms. Quality is a highly developed characteristic which can be natural or acquired over time and which can differentiate itself from others. However, a skill is the aptitude or capacity (innate or acquired) that a person possesses to exercise a certain activity or a certain work.

Let's start with the commercial qualities, which ones should every good seller take into account?

 

Confidence

Like any other good salesperson, you need to be confident in what you're doing and feel comfortable conveying your message to prospects. But it is a daily work and you can develop it steps by steps, trying new things, or by working on your “comfort zone” for example.

Sympathy

This is the key to commercial qualities. Each buyer likes to deal with people who are attentive to their needs and provide quality service. A deed of sale is entirely people-centered, thus it's key for a sales person to build a good relationship, even if they have little in common with their buyer.

Communication

In the sales area, communication, whether by telephone, online or face-to-face, is key because all the stages of this process depend on it (capturing the prospect’s interest, concluding and retaining). To develop your communicative skills, it is recommended to attend conferences, participate in debates, write articles, teach something. This helps to better structure your thoughts and thereby express them better. 
<h4Resilience 

This is another very important commercial quality... Without that, it is very difficult for a good seller to achieve his or her goal whatever it is. Accepting the word "no", analysing the context and positively considering the "no", allows you to have a “protective shield” against all adversity.

Active listening

A salesperson who knows how to apply active listening can make excellent sales. Indeed, this quality consists in discovering what a potential client is looking for and in adapting what he or she requests to what you offer. 

Sure, there are other business qualities to consider, but these 5 are the most important. It may be that a seller has 3 of 5 or 5. But be careful. The qualities alone will not get anywhere. They must go hand in hand with the skills we recommend below.

 

Skills to be a good salesperson.

We will first divide these skills into two parts. In the first part, you will learn to master different techniques that will allow you to interact effectively with others. In the following part, we will focus on the skills that any good salesperson must improve, such as the use of technological tools that allow prospecting, qualification, and negotiation with potential customers.

"Be part of the solution, not the problem"

Such an important phrase from Dale Carnegie's book "How to Win Friends and Influence People". 

Throughout our lives, we rarely learn to solve problems. And yet this skill is considered one of the most important! To achieve results, a salesperson must know and master all of the tools, strategies, and problems. 

But how do you solve problems without getting overwhelmed? 

American psychologist Marshall B. Rosenberg has developed a methodology called Nonviolent Communication (NVC). It is based on four fundamental steps to solve any problem:

  1. Observe the situation: do it without predefined judgment and investigate what is going on outside and inside.
  2. Pay attention to feelings: Identify and analyze what is happening to you and your partner.
  3. Meet the needs: Recognize the needs in-depth..
  4. Formulate your request: Make a specific request that meets the need that you have identified.

If you can apply and master each step (of course, since you are a good salesperson), you will be able to have more authentic conversations with your client without any emotional overload, and thus resolve the client's needs and their conflicts.

Building relationships

A good salesperson has templates for sales emails and sales pitches that answer all of the objections and questions frequently asked by your prospects when they enter your sales funnel. Having these weapons is good. But you also have to be very agile. Establishing a solid relationship, between the client and you, is good. Making it last a long time is better. 

This is why it is time for you to pick up the phone and develop phone prospecting, to quickly improve your communication skills. Ask for feedback or record calls from the most experienced sellers for a reference.

Advice: be disciplined

Did you know that discipline is the perfect ally for success? And this should be a rule at all levels, both personally and professionally. If you want to be successful as a salesperson, you have to strive every day to complete as many tasks as possible to find the right prospects and turn them into customers. 

It is more motivating to start the day by asking yourself this question: how many prospects am I ready to have today? 

Then, at the end of the day, do a continuous self-assessment answering yourself the following questions: did I organize my agenda today, did I move forward with my activities, how many sales pitches did I make, have I answered my customers well, how many contracts have I concluded today, etc. If you do this type of introspection, you will discover different failures that you will rigorously correct and you will progress steps by steps.

Master all possible sales techniques

Selling isn't just about finding prospects and showing them your product or service... It goes far beyond that. This is why you need to master different methods that will greatly increase your chances of selling. 

Currently, there are different sales techniques, but at efficy, we apply the following:

  • We challenge the status quo: we try to cover all possible types of sales, intuitively, by adding value to our customers.
  • We strive to find our added value: we analyze what differentiates us on the market and this is what we focus on when we offer our product.
  • We tell a story: we focus on sharing experience by explaining how our solution has benefited our customers.
  • We have built our own sales pitch: Based on the previous point, the stories of our customers help us to reinforce our argument so that the prospect feels 100% understood when proposing our CRM.
  • We are constantly adapting ourselves: we are constantly looking for and applying different tools that help us to streamline our processes to have the best possible relationship with our customers.

Maximise the benefits of your CRM

The Greek philosopher Theophrastus once said that "time is the most precious thing that man can spoil". 

Based on this sentence, analyze how long you take to manage each prospect, what do you do to retain each customer, manually send your emails, how you close each sale. 

If all the answers you gave did not meet your expectations, we think that a CRM can help you to do so, because you will be able to save time, work in a team and follow all the sales opportunities that arise. present to you. 

An example of customer relationship management (CRM) is efficy CRM. The solution was created to help each sales team be more productive and manage their negotiations effectively. 

This tool, therefore, allows you to benefit from 8 very useful functionalities for salespeople (and many others):

  • Have more personal relationships with each client.
  • Monitoring of each potential sale.
  • Be more productive at each sales phase (before, during and after).
  • Have effective internal communication.
  • Retain customers.
  • Generate more ideas through your reports and sales analysis.
  • Create segmented and personalized marketing campaigns.
  • fficiently manage emails

Whatever type of business you work for, this commercial tool is very complete for any good seller, shop for free!

Tracking + Closing = You make a successful sale

A very important step in every sales process is tracking the opportunity. The more you master this skill, the more you will be able to close each sale. 

Understand that no matter how precise or qualified your prospect is, keep in mind that people are busy and that puts your sales process on hold. It's frustrating at this point, but don't despair... Resume each negotiation in progress in your CRM and try to reap the possible positive response. It is key to know that in the world of sales, the word "maybe" does not exist. 

However, the biggest mistake sellers can make is not closing the deal. 

It will probably be obvious to you, but there are currently salespeople actively following prospects who have been hesitating for too long. He or she needs to be able to close the sale by asking whether or not the prospect will sign. This avoids wasting time and therefore potential opportunities. 

So when is the right time to close the deal? Before they are even ready to buy. 

You will probably get a first no or a "maybe". But from that moment, you can start a closing process. And if you get a "no", ask your prospect, "What should I do so that you can re-examine our latest business proposition?" This will likely surprise him a bit, so give him some time to think about and analyze why you fit his needs. Then go back to your prospect for a final answer.

Conclusion

How should you do to be a good seller? Be unique by offering excellent service to customers, with great qualities and commercial skills that allow obtaining excellent results. 

And the more qualities and skills you master, the more likely you are to become one of the best sellers in your business. Come on! Let's go for more sales! 

Allez ! Allons-y pour plus de ventes !

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Learn more about: 

Point of sale: What is it and what benefits do you get 
What are the best techniques for concluding deals? 
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Level Up Your Customer Service Skills 
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