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5 handy sales hints to help improve your sales skills.

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The art of sales is a minefield. If it was easy, we’d all be doing it. With this in mind, we’ve come up with 5 handy sales hints and sales skills to help you sell more.

5 sales tips infographic

 

1. Perfect your sales pitch introduction


You’ve called your prospect company, you’ve beaten the gatekeeper, you’re in! Time to tell them about all the wonderful services you have…

Or not… You certainly do need to do this but firstly, think about what you’re saying, does your introductory sales pitch need tweaking?

If you talk in-depth about your company’s history? Then, spoiler… no one cares!

We’re selfish and time is precious, all your prospect cares about is how you can help them, how can you make them money, save them time or money.

Time to show off your sales skills! Make sure your introduction is benefit-led, name drop similar companies you’ve been working with and, if possible, drop credible figures on how much your company can make or save them based on past experience.

Most importantly, though, we have only one mouth but two ears for a reason. So, listen to your prospect more than you talk!

So, think of possible questions they may ask of your product, prepare an answer, then ask them questions during your sales pitch so that you’re selling really does feel tailored to them.

Make sure that they feel they are missing out by not working with you!

 

2. Know your target industry


What motivates your customer? What are their pain points?

Every sale comes with a degree of risk for the buyer but it’s the salesperson’s job to use sales techniques to reduce these risks and make the buying process as smooth as possible.

One way to do this is to use your sales skills to ensure that they know they are buying from an industry expert (You!).

So, get reading about your prospect’s industry, what are their pain points? What are the current trends and issues they face? How can your product or service help them?

Try to find similar customers in their industry who you’ve worked with and share examples or case studies with them. Find out if they are part of an organizational group and join it, go to industry events, get your company to do talks for their industry, comment on industry posts on LinkedIn, host charity events… get your name out there as often as you can, so when you talk to them, they already know who you are.

 

3. Know your competitors


How well do you know your competitors?

Take some time to review their website, sign up to receive Google email alerts, check their social media to review their messaging and see what benefits they are trying to sell, understand what you do that they don’t and vice versa.

If you find out they are selling a benefit that you aren’t then you will need to prepare to answer the question as to what you can offer instead.

Have you got any customers who have switched to you from your competitors? Ask them for a case study and ask them why they chose you.

You can be sure that your prospect has done their research, so you should do. Failing to prepare… is preparing to fail.

 

4. Re-learn your product


You may have had some initial product training when you entered the business but there is nothing wrong with having a refresher. You may find that your products have changed, they may now do something they didn’t do before.

It can sometimes feel that time spent away from selling is lost time, however, actually being able to share that extra bit of product knowledge with a prospect or customer will improve your sales techniques and may just give you that extra 5% you need to bag a sale.

 

5. Spend more time actually selling


How much of your time is actually spent pounding the phone and making calls?

How many of your sales team are actually on the phone right now?

It’s not their fault. I promise! Instead of using their sales skills they’ll probably be prospecting, spending time on admin, preparing for a meeting or preparing sales reports.

One way of changing this is by incorporating sales software to give you a helping hand, to save you admin and meeting preparation time.

One such tool is sales-i. sales-i is a system that links into your invoicing data to alert you to customers you should be selling to, lets you know what you should be talking about and works with your diary to prepare sales reports for upcoming meetings, which tells you all of their sales data, including what they have and haven’t been buying, to give you talking points and sales leads.

Software such as sales-i can produce advanced sales reports too and let you know how you are doing versus a previous time frame or against target, saving you valuable time doing the boring, admin heavy jobs, so you can get back to, what’s important, selling.

 

Let us know if you agree with these five sales tips or if there are any sales skills or sales tricks you think we are missing by commenting below.

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