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.
