Whether you’re selling a product or a service, there are quite a few ethical sales techniques that you need to know in order to put yourself at the greatest advantage for success. Today we’re going to talk about 3 ethical sales techniques so that you can start figuring out whether or not your current sales skills are making the grade. Let’s jump right in so that you can start improving!

1. Know your product or service

Whether you’re selling one thing, or hundreds, it’s important that you know what you’re selling. If you don’t have the information that your customers want to know at hand, it could easily break the sale. If you sell multiple products or services, it’s going to be difficult to remember everything, which is why it’s just as important to have good documentation or resources in place that you can easily reference when need be.

2. Get to know pricing psychology

If you’re responsible for setting the prices for what you’re selling, research pricing psychology. Pricing psychology has to do with price points that make people buy and how they emotionally connect to pricing strategies. Not only is it a real marketing tactic, but getting it wrong may cost you sales.

3. Focus on the customer’s time

While the time it takes for you to sell a product or service to the customer can also make or break deals, it’s not that time that we’re referring to here. What we’re talking about is being able to effectively communicate to the customer how much time your product or service will save them. When people are thinking about making a purchase, one of the first questions that they ask themselves is “how will this benefit me?” If you can answer that question for them and convince them of such, the ball is in your court.

Sales techniques don’t have be overly complicated – simply know your consumer, know how pricing plays a part and know how what you’re selling can benefit the customer. These strategies are simple, straight forward and easy to learn.

Your selling skills are the foundation of your success whether you are running your own business or working the sales department for another company. Expanding your selling knowledge provides you with more avenues to close the deal and put more profit in your pocket. Interestingly enough, many of those who demonstrate the best selling skills use a simple, direct approach that may seem counter-intuitive to others. However, it works because it goes to the heart of what makes a successful sale which is appreciating the intelligence of the customer and providing solid reasons why they should make the purchase.

Five Ways to Improve Selling Skills

Be Prepared: The more prepared you are for selling, the better your results will be. Start with settings specific goals of how many sales that you will make over a pre-designated period of time. Then, keep track of your results over that period of time so that you can remain focused. If something is not working, change it a little and keep trying.

Be Clear: You will need to be clear and direct in your approach, using your selling knowledge to list off the benefits of why a customer should purchase your product or service. The better you know your business, products and services, particularly the benefits they provide, the more sales you will make.

Be Direct: Your sales approach will have to address the needs of the customer, so you should assume that what you offer addresses that particular need. You should be direct in offering benefits of how your product or service can save them in money, time or effort if that’s what it can do. Identify what needs that are addressed by the product or service and then use that to sell the customer.

Be Mindful: One of the greatest selling skills is listening to your customer. They will tell you of their needs so that you can pick up on that information and address it. When you make your pitch or presentation, listen to the reaction and then use your selling knowledge to shift gears to directly address their statements and go from there.

Be Persistent: Studies have shown that on average a buyer will say “no” around five times before purchasing the product or service. So, you will need to be persistent in your efforts to make the sale.

When a customer says “no”, you will need to use your sales knowledge to find more reasons why they should say “yes”. Always be polite, but keep going until the customer hangs up or leaves because as long as they are staying to listen to your pitch, they are interested.

In the end, the more you can develop your skills at selling, the better you will be at closing the deal. From telemarketing to selling over the counter products to offering all types of services, all of them require the same basic skill set in terms of building selling knowledge. So, work on the basics of selling and branch out from there in order to make your sales grow.