What are the key skills to be successful in sales?
In the last twenty years, I have worked with some of the best salespeople I have ever met. I tried to learn from each one, searching for the magical formula for the art of selling.
Unfortunately, there is no formula or magic potion; every salesperson has their skills, but something unites each. What is it?
Well, the answer is simpler than it seems: to be successful in sales, you must have good communication skills. Mastering these skills enables you to close a sale. It empowers you to transfer the value of your product or solution to the customer, fully understand their problems, and propose a simple strategy to solve them.
It may seem obvious, but you can only close a sale if you have transferred the value of your product or solution to the customer, fully understand their problems, and propose a simple strategy to solve them.
In B2B sales, it can be challenging to sell something if there has been no communication between people and if the customer has not had the opportunity to explain in due detail the challenges and needs of their company. In B2B sales, it’s crucial to have open and honest conversations with your customers to understand their needs and propose the right solutions.
I will share some of my findings in this post (and the next one).
The work is increasingly demanding, and due to the continuous pressures they receive, it has become very complicated for every salesperson to devote themselves to only one activity at a time.
Understandably, during a meeting with a potential client, your thoughts may be distracted by the afternoon demo you have to prepare, the activities you have not had time to finish, or the contract you are waiting for confirmation.
It’s not enough to just be there. You need to be fully present in every conversation. This means putting aside distractions and focusing on the person before you. It’s not always easy, but it’s essential for the success of your business.
More than answering the phone or being present at a meeting is required. You have to devote 100% of your attention to every conversation. Otherwise, you will miss essential details and have to ask the customer to repeat concepts that the customer has already explained to you. When you don’t pay attention, it is noticeable and not what your customers expect.
You need to apply not just listening but active listening, a far more critical skill. Active listening involves hearing what the other person is saying, understanding their perspective, and responding appropriately. It’s about being fully present and showing the other person you value their input.
Salespeople often live their conversations with customers in spasmodic anticipation of the moment they will have to speak, and they think about what they will have to say. However, what’s more critical is active listening. This helps you understand the prospect’s needs better and builds trust, making the customer feel valued and integral to the sales process.
To take an active role in a conversation, you need to respect these aspects:
We have certainly all experienced this in person: the same sentence spoken by a person who smiles at us, who looks us in the eye, and who is sitting straight in front of us we perceive differently than the same sentence pronounced by a person who looks away and fidgets while talking to us, even if the meaning of the words is probably the same.
Anyone can choose the words they use carefully; however, body language almost always reveals the real intentions and meaning we give to the context and message. Body language includes facial expressions, gestures, and posture, often conveying more about a person’s feelings and attitudes than their words.
The best communicators know how to interpret body language and anticipate the direction of a conversation, but they can also control their bodies to avoid conveying wrong or unwanted emotions.
Prospects don’t always tell the whole truth, and that’s completely normal. It’s good to know when this happens. Understanding these unspoken aspects gives you a competitive edge, making you feel strategic and insightful in your sales approach.
Is your interlocutor evaluating your company’s services because their boss asked them to present them with three options? The person you’ve interfaced with likes the project, but the decision-maker needs to be convinced.
These are crucial aspects to decipher, and you can only discover them once you’ve learned to interpret the moments and read the situation between the lines. This means paying attention to subtle cues, such as changes in tone of voice or body language, that may indicate the customer’s true feelings or concerns.
The best communicators don’t use dramatic tones or corny rhetoric to persuade their customers. They can convince others because they can present practical examples or anecdotes to support their line of conversation and goals.
This happens when it comes to sales professionals because they know how to demonstrate precisely how one of their products or services can help their buyer.
So try to be as concrete as possible. Instead of making vague claims about your product’s benefits, present practical cases, prove the veracity of a claim through real examples and corroborate your thesis with numbers and insights. For example, instead of saying, ‘Our product can increase your productivity ‘, you could say, ‘Our product has been shown to increase productivity by 20% in similar companies ‘. Be specific, and your prospects will want to work with you.
In the last twenty years, I have worked with some of the best salespeople I have ever met.
I tried to learn from each one, searching for the magical formula for the art of selling.
Unfortunately, there is no formula or magic potion; every salesperson has their skills, but something unites each. What is it?
Well, the answer is simpler than it seems: to be successful in sales, you must have good communication skills. Mastering these skills enables you to close a sale. It empowers you to transfer the value of your product or solution to the customer, fully understand their problems, and propose a simple strategy to solve them.
It may seem obvious, but you can only close a sale if you have transferred the value of your product or solution to the customer, fully understand their problems, and propose a simple strategy to solve them.
In B2B sales, it can be challenging to sell something if there has been no communication between people and if the customer has not had the opportunity to explain in due detail the challenges and needs of their company. In B2B sales, it’s crucial to have open and honest conversations with your customers to understand their needs and propose the right solutions.
I will share some of my findings in this post (and the next one).
The work is increasingly demanding, and due to the continuous pressures they receive, it has become very complicated for every salesperson to devote themselves to only one activity at a time.
Understandably, during a meeting with a potential client, your thoughts may be distracted by the afternoon demo you have to prepare, the activities you have not had time to finish, or the contract you are waiting for confirmation.
It’s not enough to just be there. You need to be fully present in every conversation. This means putting aside distractions and focusing on the person before you. It’s not always easy, but it’s essential for the success of your business.
More than answering the phone or being present at a meeting is required. You have to devote 100% of your attention to every conversation. Otherwise, you will miss essential details and have to ask the customer to repeat concepts that the customer has already explained to you. When you don’t pay attention, it is noticeable and not what your customers expect.
You need to apply not just listening but active listening, a far more critical skill. Active listening involves hearing what the other person is saying, understanding their perspective, and responding appropriately. It’s about being fully present and showing the other person you value their input.
Salespeople often live their conversations with customers in spasmodic anticipation of the moment they will have to speak, and they think about what they will have to say. However, what’s more critical is active listening. This helps you understand the prospect’s needs better and builds trust, making the customer feel valued and integral to the sales process.
To take an active role in a conversation, you need to respect these aspects:
We have certainly all experienced this in person: the same sentence spoken by a person who smiles at us, who looks us in the eye, and who is sitting straight in front of us we perceive differently than the same sentence pronounced by a person who looks away and fidgets while talking to us, even if the meaning of the words is probably the same.
Anyone can choose the words they use carefully; however, body language almost always reveals the real intentions and meaning we give to the context and message. Body language includes facial expressions, gestures, and posture, often conveying more about a person’s feelings and attitudes than their words.
The best communicators know how to interpret body language and anticipate the direction of a conversation, but they can also control their bodies to avoid conveying wrong or unwanted emotions.
Prospects don’t always tell the whole truth, and that’s completely normal. It’s good to know when this happens. Understanding these unspoken aspects gives you a competitive edge, making you feel strategic and insightful in your sales approach.
Is your interlocutor evaluating your company’s services because their boss asked them to present them with three options? The person you’ve interfaced with likes the project, but the decision-maker needs to be convinced.
These are crucial aspects to decipher, and you can only discover them once you’ve learned to interpret the moments and read the situation between the lines. This means paying attention to subtle cues, such as changes in tone of voice or body language, that may indicate the customer’s true feelings or concerns.
The best communicators don’t use dramatic tones or corny rhetoric to persuade their customers. They can convince others because they can present practical examples or anecdotes to support their line of conversation and goals.
This happens when it comes to sales professionals because they know how to demonstrate precisely how one of their products or services can help their buyer.
So try to be as concrete as possible. Instead of making vague claims about your product’s benefits, present practical cases, prove the veracity of a claim through real examples and corroborate your thesis with numbers and insights. For example, instead of saying, ‘Our product can increase your productivity ‘, you could say, ‘Our product has been shown to increase productivity by 20% in similar companies ‘. Be specific, and your prospects will want to work with you.
