One in every five businesses doesn’t last the first two years, as reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. How do you position your business, so it doesn’t drown with the rest? The solution usually lies in how well you handle your finances, management, and sales.
In this article, we’ll take a particular focus on sales. So, let’s delve into the key skills for pushing your sales volumes.
Why sales training is critical
In a competitive environment like sales, it’s important to seize every possible opportunity to get ahead. Knowing the skills you need is one thing, but figuring out how to apply these competencies is a whole other ball game. That’s where sales training courses come in.
Through courses, your team can learn how to use and improve their skills to achieve the main sales competencies, such as improving win rates, shortening deal times, or increasing margins.
Your reps can also practice and gain confidence through peer-to-peer feedback, empowering each other to perform better at their tasks. Working together during sessions can also boost teamwork, which can help your business hit more targets.
Below are some of the main skills your team can learn that can buoy your sales outcomes.
Prospecting and qualification
Prospecting is the process when salespeople seek out and develop a pipeline of potential customers. Statistics show that:
- 42% of salespeople find prospecting difficult (HubSpot)
- 90% of reps don’t prospect consistently (Predictable Revenue)
These statistics highlight the importance of training reps on how to keep feeding new prospects into the pipeline. If you don’t keep up with reaching out and finding potential new customers, your sales are likely to stagnate instead of grow.
So, what are some of the strategies for prospecting? First, it’s critical to have a detailed buyer persona that outlines the ideal buyer for your products or services. With the ideal buyer in mind, you can sieve out unlikely buyers and avoid wasting time.
Here are some prospecting tips:
- Keep at it. It takes several follow-ups on leads to turn them into qualified prospects. So, it’s important not to bow out early. Telenet and Ovation Sales Group statistics say that it takes at least eight follow-ups to get through to a prospect.
- Use several sources of data to look for new leads. Consider investing in data analytics to get insights into customer behaviors and trends so you can easily identify people most likely to be interested in your product or service.
- Set aside time to prospect. With all the other duties in the sales process, it’s easy to overlook the more challenging tasks like prospecting, so be intentional and stick to a set routine.
Negotiating and value selling
Hitting targets and quotas at any cost can lead to rash discounts that drastically undercut business margins. It’s critical for reps to get the right training so they can preserve value on every deal.
Negotiation courses teach the importance of exchanging value, not giving it away. So, when customers press you for discounts and lower prices, it’s important to know how to accommodate your buyers without losing out. For instance, you can agree to drop the price in exchange for a long-term agreement that guarantees future purchases, with a pricing escalation mechanism.
Some essential techniques for salespeople to remember include:
- See beyond the price. Consider other value points to bring to the table, such as payment plans.
- Think about alternative options before you start negotiations. When presented with alternatives, the buyer may be more willing to hear you out. In addition, visualizing possible outcomes can help you determine when to call it quits if the talks prove fruitless.
Storytelling in pitching
How your reps present your offering to buyers can make or break a deal. Customers are often bombarded with pitches from various businesses every day, often making them numb and unreceptive to sales communication.
Training courses can teach reps how to package their pitch in a way that’s palatable to the buyer, for instance:
- Focusing on how the buyer will benefit from the product or service, not on its features.
- Listening to the customers instead of delivering a standard pitch. When you listen more, you can get to the bottom of the customer’s pain points. Understanding the buyer’s needs lets you plainly show them how the product or service can meet their needs.
- Weaving a story that resonates with buyers. Stories evoke an emotional response. You can use them to bring up issues that the buyer relates to and highlight your offering as the hero of the story. For example, by using customer testimonials that showcase a before and after scenario where the product or service solved their pain points.
Social selling
Numbers crunched by Statista indicate that there are over four billion active social media users. Social media platforms offer an opportunity to connect and interact with buyers, which can guide them to buy your products or services. That’s why the best sales training courses help salespeople learn how to navigate the social sphere to use it effectively.
Some of the leading social selling aspects that reps should know include:
- the etiquette of different social media platforms
- leveraging their expertise to help customers by answering questions, responding to comments, and providing helpful content
- how to engage with customers without coming off as pushy
- using social media sites to dig deeper into customer behaviors and identify new leads
- linking to products directly from social media to increase purchases
- how to promote a brand on different platforms using various media like videos or text
Self-motivation and resilience
Finding new prospects and nurturing them along the pipeline until you seal the deal takes time and determination. Despite your best efforts, some deals will fall along the wayside. It’s important for salespeople to learn how to develop the resilience to keep forging ahead in the face of disappointment.
It’s essential to keep a level head and sober emotional state despite the circumstances so you can tackle the next challenge. Here are some tips for developing resilience:
- Distance yourself from the rejection. When a customer says no, it should not reflect on you personally. Rejections are a common part of the process, so take it in your stride.
- Extract the lessons. Perhaps the prospect was not a good fit for your customer persona. Or maybe you pushed too hard? Chew over the failed sale and draw out the main lessons so you can keep improving.
To conclude
Mastering important sales skills like prospecting, pitching effectively, negotiating, social selling, and resilience can help reps rise above challenges and score more deals. As a result, it’s vital for businesses to include comprehensive sales courses to train reps to be more effective.
