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The ability to sell is an invaluable skill in the marketplace. Without a strong sales team, no business can get off the ground.
What businesses look for in their sales team can differ depending on the industry they are in, but there are a few core salesperson skills and qualities that are universally required.
Skills Of A Salesperson
There are several basic skills every successful salesperson needs. Let’s look at a few of them.
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Understanding A Client’s Needs
One of the key skills of a salesperson is understanding what their client needs. If the salesperson can find the right product to sell to the right person, convincing them it’s a value addition for them is much easier. By taking time to study an organization’s business model, there might be opportunities to uncover, which would otherwise remain hidden. Powers of persuasion work better when the person selling is answering a pre-existing need.
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Listening Empathetically
From the outside, it might appear sales is all about fast-talking, but being able to listen is just as important for a salesperson. When a client feels heard, they respond better to efforts at selling. Trying to sell them something unrelated to what they are looking for won’t find much success. Sales opportunities will present themselves organically with a little patience. That’s why active listening is high on the list of salesperson skills and qualities.
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Delivering A Powerful Sales Pitch
What makes an effective pitch? It’s more an art than it is a science, making this a hard question to answer. But we can learn how to increase our effectiveness in pitching. If a sales professional has carefully heard a client and is aware of the needs of the industry, tailoring a pitch is easier.
For a salesperson, how to sell without appearing as though they are always selling is a delicate balancing act. All sales personality types can gain the ability to influence with tact through practice and experience.
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Building Relationships
Once a buyer is in your sales funnel, a salesperson must do everything in their power to keep them there. Gaining a customer who buys several products is far easier than acquiring several customers to buy one product each. For a sales professional, the ability to keep customers can be transformative. A good client can bring in business year after year. Building a strong relationship is critical to this.
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Being Persistent
Sales requires grit. It can take many pitches, calls and follow-ups to make a single sale—if you’re lucky. Persistence is one of the most critical weapons in a salesperson’s arsenal. Even in the face of failure, persistence and a positive attitude will keep the door open for future sales calls. And if a relationship has already been built, even better.
Types Of Salespeople
An understanding of the different types of salespeople needed for different roles can help organizations find the right people for their needs.
In the classification of salesmanship, there are the ‘order takers’ and the ‘order creators’. An order taker receives orders and passes on information about them. It’s not their job to convince people to buy.
Order creators are the other types of salesperson. These are roles that call for active sales. The specific skills of a salesperson depend on the needs of the job itself. For instance, there is the missionary salesperson, whose job is to influence other professionals to use their products rather than make outright sales. A common example of this is the pharmaceutical representative who encourages doctors to prescribe their brand of medicine over another brand name.
One of the main types of salesperson is the ‘order getter’, who is engaged in direct sales. This could be individual or institutional sales. Individual sales happen everywhere there is contact with the end user. A hair stylist in a salon can sell a color job to go with the cut they just gave their client. A realtor can sell an apartment with more square footage than the customer thought they wanted. A software salesperson can sell simulation software to a chain of management colleges. Having this sales experience holds employees in good stead, as these skills are always in demand.
Perfect Those Sales Skills With Harappa
The Harappa Impactful Sales Program is designed for every professional in a sales role. Over the course of 30 hours spread across 15 weeks, learners gain the skills to make compelling sales pitches, understand client needs, create customized solutions and strengthen relationships with customers in order to sell or gain referrals. They’ll also learn how to represent a brand better and how to handle the trials of the professional world with greater resilience.
Explore Harappa Diaries to learn more about topics such as Top Sales Skills Required For A Salesperson, Top Qualities of a Sales Executive, Roles And Responsibilities Of A Sales Executive & Who is a Sales Professional that will help organizations tap into their employee’s potential.
