A creature born as a human being in this planet is sales manager by birth they need not separate classroom training to master sales skills.
If you closely observe your day to day activities you will find a sales manager and surprisingly a purchase manager lying inside you.
A mother trying to sell his cooked food to his children, A husband trying to sell his love, A teacher selling his knowledge and a student purchasing the knowledge by paying the tuition fee.
Everything is a sale and purchase processes. In a business transaction, we use the money to trade but in private transactions, we do trade for intangible love and knowledge.
In commercial world whenever we hear of the word sales executive, we get a typical idea they are annoying and will manipulate to sell their products.
I was turned down by many numbers of gatekeepers than decision makers. Because they think by repelling a sales executive they could save their company from a hazard.
Nevertheless, few sales executives are crashing the gate perfectly and winning the order. These sales executives are not gifted with some special selling powers by birth but they developed it later.
In sales, WILL is important than SKILL. Skill can be learned but WILL can’t be taught from outside, it is intrinsic – mentioned in the book You Can Sell.
In each company, there is always a top performer who kills the numbers and a puny who struggles a lot to add a new account in a month.
In my sales experience and reading some books I found a sales executive should be taught these 5 important sales skills to nail it and there is no lack of sales jobs for you in the market if you can do it.
5 sales skills to be taught to your sales executives
1. Believe the product and profession
Before you teach anything about the product it’s a sales training manager’s job to make the executive feel proud of his profession.
Some sales executives feel small inside to tell the profession outside because it was procrastinated as the least reputed profession among all.
Even during my initial days, I felt the same. I felt timid to share my day to day activities with my friends and families which faded away as the time grown.
Outsiders think because we didn’t get any job we have chosen this profession.
Everybody can become a sales executive but only few could become a successful sales executive those who become successful believe their profession is noble like an engineer, teacher, and doctor.
It’s not only the growth of your company but the growth of the nation is also on your hand. Only if you sell more or create a market your company can produce more, only if your company produces more unemployment rate reduce which ultimately improve the societies livelihood.
If you don’t feel proud about your profession then you are not eligible to be a sales executive.
It is the duty of training manager to make their sales executives feel proud. But in most of the companies, it is happening upside down.
Instead of encouraging the employee by increasing incentives few companies give job threat.
It’s not only about the profession, sales executive should believe the product or service he is selling. Only if he believes he could sell more else his subconscious mind reminds him he is manipulating customers.
Amway dealers and insurance agents buy and use the product first before they recommend it to others. They approach more number of people irrespective of the rejections because they believe their product is worth recommending.
In my previous organization, three sales executives didn’t believe the product what they are selling even when they had own requirement they didn’t buy from their own company.
It is the duty of the organization to convince the sales team before they convince the buyers.
2. Psychology
Every sales person should be taught the basics of psychology.
All the companies are putting more efforts to recruit sales executives with good communication skills or training their own executives to improve their communication skills.
We often read this line in the Job description that candidates are expected to have good communication skills. But what is communication?
A research conducted by the private organization found that fifty-five percent of communication is nonverbal, thirty-eight percent is the only tone of the voice like hmmm, haha, oh and remaining seven percent is only verbal.
What is the point of grooming your sales executive for only seven percent of the conversation? You should make him ready for 100%.
To understand nonverbal communication, they should be taught at least little psychology.
Sales executives should know what is the meaning if the listener bends forward, what is the meaning if he has cross hands, what is the meaning if he leans back and listens.
Only if they know these signs they could understand and change the presentation style.
I personally suggest Psychology is one of the important sales skills to be taught.
I was given a special session on Psychology by my training manager it was useful and still, I remember the signs he taught.
3. Give them adequate materials
A study says when you spend five to seven hours a week to learn about your field you will become an expert in that respective field in three to five years.
Rather than expecting experts to join the organization at high-cost companies can nurture their existing employees to become experts in three to four years at low cost.
Feeding enough product knowledge will not only help your sales executives to solve buyer’s queries but also gives your company a status of a thought leader.
Some top IT companies are dedicating a session in a week to nurture their employees but this habit has to be adopted by brick and mortar companies also.
4. To handle stress
They should be trained to handle both internal and external stress.
Internal stress is due to target and external stress is from customers.
In manufacturing industries, the internal pressure is the major concern whereas in service industry both internal and external pressure is a concern.
External stress can be reduced if we learn how to handle the customer efficiently.
A human being is a complicated creature in the world we cannot predict how it reacts and responds. But who masters the skill of handling humans could easily build numbers.
A good product needs only ordinary sales executives but an ordinary product needs extraordinary sales executive to increase the sales volume.
Companies must analyze their market position before they impose an unimaginable number as a target. But most of them are not.
In a race to grab the market share companies hiring more sales executives and setting high targets. Setting the unattainable target is a silent warning of job threat.
All the creatures by nature find the least resistance path to overcome. When you put more pressure, your sales executive will find the least resistant company for sure.
This training is very important for freshers or inexperienced sales executives to handle rejections. Most of the time they take rejection as dejection.
In my early days, I did the same whenever a client turns down the deal I lost the hope and shared the experience with my manager but that gentleman simply encouraged.
5. Ethical Behaviour
This is the first and foremost habit you should inculcate in your team. If your sales executive is not ethical it will have an adverse effect on your brand name.
As a buyer, I had many worst experiences from few unethical sales executives. They had given me many wrong commitments to sell the product.
Their aim was to close the deal by pushing the product to me so whatever I asked they said YES and closed the deal. But nothing was there as committed.
Whenever I talk about this incident in public forum I am not referring the sales executive’s name but the brand name.
Companies should teach their executives to play fair game irrespective of the situation.
These are the five sales skills to be taught to your sales executives. If you contradict or to better on this post you can comment down your suggestions.
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