Sales skills to attract customers are a must for any salesperson who wants to be successful. In today’s tough economy, many sales reps lack these skills at a time when they’re needed most. The global economy has forced many consumers to err on the side of caution when making any purchase decision. Here are four essential sales skills any salesperson can use to engage with customers and win the sale.
1. Build trust with your audience
The failure of many sales presentations is due to the salesperson not first facilitating a relationship with their prospect. By nature, people do not like to be sold or presented with a product or service that they are not sure about. Sellers typically go into a direct selling mode, which can turn customers off. As a salesperson, you need to stay in sync with your prospects, and like any relationship, this can take time. The classic figure cited by many sales gurus is 7 touch points. The good news now is that it could include an email you could send or a LinkedIn interaction that typically involves an introduction to both parties combined with multiple points of contact via phone, email, or in person over a defined period to build trust.
2. Ask them to find out what they want
To sell effectively, you need to know what your sales prospect wants, and to find out what they want, you need to ask the right questions. Too many salespeople think they know what their customer wants and that’s why they don’t make as many sales as they could. Trying to get someone to buy something they don’t want is infinitely more difficult than simply facilitating the buying process for someone who knows what they want and you just connect with them, deliver the product or service, and collect the money. The only way to find out what your customers want is to ask them intelligent questions that reveal what they really want and what they’re willing to pay for.
3. Sell benefits, not features of products and services.
Sellers can often get confused on how to effectively sell to customers, and a common mistake they make is selling product features instead of benefits. A simple example is in the vacuum market. A typical feature would be that it may have less bag, however the benefit is that the customer will save money by not having to replace the bag. A great salesperson will always sell the benefits of a product or service because ultimately that is what the consumer wants, the benefits.
By asking the questions earlier in the sales process, your sales people discover which benefit is relevant.
4. Commitment from your sales leader confirms the sale
The goal of all sales techniques is to conclude with your sales prospect or sales leader committing to purchase a product or service. Now this could take more than one sales call. If you are selling a small, inexpensive item, it will most likely happen right away. If you are selling a higher value item, it may take more than 5 calls. However, a significant number of salespeople forget this fundamental rule and do not even try to get commitment. Commitment will move the process forward. This could be for the
Consumers are smart and with many products on the market vying for their attention, they are more pragmatic in their decision making. With a wide variety of services and products, a seller’s job is even more key to engaging and helping the buyer make a decision. This makes it imperative that any sales person who wants to be successful must be fully trained in advanced sales skills to initiate a customer to buy.
