0There are countless articles about the most important personality trait a salesperson should possess, many of which are based on real, scientific evidence and others from personal observations. Both are fitting for discussion and should be taken into consideration when approaching a prospect.
Every person has a unique personality and character which are their biggest strengths when it comes to differentiating themselves from the crowd – although there are certain personality traits that some of the most successful salespersons possess.
Traditional And Modern Sales
Some people believe in the proven, old-school way of selling, and the most important trait in that book is the sales aptitude. That makes sense because you want a salesperson that has a strong selling capability and a high drive for achieving more immediate results.
According to Inc, having sales reps who have a high drive, and understand that buyers’ decision is based on the “Old Brain”, have a higher chance of selling. Salespersons need to present good quality service and products with reasonable prices to appeal to the logical side of the buyer. And when the buyer is considering more offers – it is when they will make a decision based on the emotions.
Sales Hacker is on the opposite side of the spectrum – they believe that the time for change has come and that it’s time for sales profession to evolve. New age consumers are bombarded with ads, which resulted in nearly half of them distrusting the brands. There needs to be a shift from a traditional way of selling to a more emotional and empathetic attitude which will reassure buyers.
Having a sales rep way of thinking is a necessity – the ability to bounce right back from a loss or rejection, or being daring enough to make a bold claim is what makes up a courageous salesperson. From thinking to acting is where things should change – the human side of turning a prospect into a customer should take a priority. The hard sell and cold emails merits are fading, and businesses that nurture leads through marketing automation are experiencing a huge increase in qualified leads. After thinking and acting, you need to react with one goal in mind – prospect satisfaction.
Sales Relationships
Everybody knows that more often than not quality is more important than quantity. And it seems that we all understand that building a strong, deep relationship is far more worthwhile than just “making more calls”, but the management department of many companies keeps on directing salespeople to call more prospects. Spreading too thin is a phrase all too familiar with sales reps.
More isn’t always the merrier when it comes to sales, the differences between the top performers and everyone else is fewer people that generate more business. You need to offer value when building a client base and prioritize the most important prospects.
Now that we’ve talked about the number of clients, have you ever wondered if you have the right number of sales reps?
Most companies divide the projected revenue number by the average quota number giving a headcount number, then they multiply it by the cost per rep using the “all-in” cost-based, commissions, overhead, yielding a cost of sale expressed as a percentage of revenue.
This distribution isn’t sustainable, but at the same time losing sales reps could lead to missing the number. To tackle this problem, SBI is offering two solutions: a top-down approach – by calculating the market territory potential, and a bottom-up approach – the workload analysis.
Often times when people want to build on their personal or business relationships it can get quite messy, in some cases even risky – like eating a live scorpion. So having somebody help you along the way can make things run more smoothly. But, why do some of these coaching sessions fail?
Forbes has written an interesting article comparing sales coaching to tiered coaching done by the adult meerkats teach their young pups how to dismantle a live venomous scorpion and then eating it.
This is a long and complicated process that is explained to their young ones step-by-step. If they demonstrated the entire process all at once it wouldn’t work. The same with coaching a rep on a big potential rep – you need to start from the simplest steps, like coaching their call openings first let them become good at it and then continue to the next step. Once they have mastered the skill, it’s highly unlikely they will need help in the future.
How about changing some outdated sales techniques? It’s about time, right? Forgetting about hard closing and learning how to influence them. No persuasion – you need to build a good relationship so they will come to you instead.
Showing your true personality and some vulnerability will get you there – it will make you seem more human and less of a sales robot. In this day and age, people don’t trust salesperson can understand their needs and you should show them otherwise.
Prioritizing satisfaction over sprinting towards the close – slow and steady wins the race.
Sales Process
Improving sales process is a never-ending process. You can always perfect it and add to or subtract from it. This is why we like to share the freshest tips and advice on how to do so – every single article about it can bring something new that could be the potential game changer in your business.
SalesHandy is sharing their perspective on how to improve the sales process. You should start off by understanding what your potential customers want and getting them familiar with the buying process. The next step is to understand the reasons for the sales process, making things run more smoothly and prevents wastage of efforts. We already mentioned that quality prevails, and having quality leads bring more sales. It is recommended that the responsibilities of each member be appointed to them according to their interests and talents and not randomly, and finally – try the automation whenever you can.
When it comes to outbound sales process SalesHackers is sharing some of their personal experience. First and foremost – how is your product going to change their business? It’s important to convince them that your product is what will make their company better. Is your product what they need or just something nice to have? If the product doesn’t create a sense of necessity, then the salesperson needs to do that – you need to make them understand that what you’re selling is vital to their business. Sticking to status quo is not good, and you need to convince them that.
SalesHandy is also sharing a long read about the cold emailing funnel – what tools can we use to create, track and execute these kinds of email.
Week in Sales No 17 – Wrap up
These are some of the articles we found to be most interesting in sales during this week of sales knowledge sharing.
Did you read or write anything that could help us learn something new?
If so, feel free to contact us and send us interesting links, we’d be happy to share the article with the world
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