- Selling to Big Companies: The book is written by Jill Konrath who is an expert in complex sales strategies. She publishes one of the industry’s top sales blogs, as well as a newsletter with thousands of subscribers around the world. An in-demand speaker and workshop presenter, Jill is frequently quoted in news media nationwide.
- Fanatical Prospecting: The book is written by Jeb Blount who is a sales acceleration specialist who helps sales organizations reach peak performance fast by optimizing talent, leveraging training to cultivate a high-performance sales culture, developing leadership and coaching skills and applying more effective organizational design.
- The Ultimate Sales Machine: The book is written by Chet Holmes who is an acclaimed corporate trainer, strategic mastermind, business growth expert and lecturer. His nearly one thousand clients have included companies like Pacific Bell, NBC, Citibank, Warner Bros.
- Everybody Writes: The book is written by Ann Handley and one of my personal favorite, is a veteran of creating and managing content. She is the Chief Content Officer of Marketing Profs, a training and education company with the largest community of marketers in its category.
- The New Rules of Marketing & PR: The book is written by David Meerman Scott who is the author of ten books including real-time marketing and PR, the new rules of sales and service and news jacking. David’s popular blog, advisory work with fast-growing companies and speaking engagements around the world give him a singular perspective on how businesses are implementing new strategies to reach buyers directly and in real time.
What are the traits of a Successful Sales Person?
If you ask a Successful Sales Person, “What makes them stand out from the average Sales Rep?” Most likely you will not get an accurate answer or may be no answer at all because most of them are doing what comes naturally. Being successful in sales is a result of skill and practice, like any other skills great selling techniques cannot be acquired in a day.
To be successful in sales you will need to keep upgrading your skills, practice them regularly and grow incrementally with each experience.
Listening Skills: This is one of the most important skills sales people needs to keep working on it. Successful sales people will always listen to understand rather than to reply the prospects questions.
Being Empathy: Its a great way to anticipate what the prospects wants. Successful sales people will know how to feel what their prospects feel. By getting into their skin they will be able to successfully sell their products/services.
A Hunter Mindset: They will always be excited to hunt for the big fish. They will prepare endlessly and wade through lot of information, contacts and leads in order to put themselves in a position to land as many big accounts as possible.
Being Disciplined: Successful sales people will be very disciplined & consistent with follow-ups on potential clients. Even coming to office & completing their activities on time.
Confidence: Believing in the product or service they are selling is essential. That comes across as a confidence that’s infectious and makes customers want to buy more.
Communication Skills: Its also one of most important skill. People who excel here know how to stay away from jargon and hard to understand concepts.
Passion: A successful sales people will be very passionate about their profession. They will do whatever it takes to master in their profession.
Why You Should Focus on Improving Successful Salesman
Most of the organization may already have a one or two very successful salesman working for them. They are the one’s who hit their quota most of the time, earn their prospect’s trust & respect. They have made themselves an asset to the company. However it’s also very important for an organization to focus on improving their Successful Salesman.
You may also find that organization often makes it difficult for them to meet their quotas, requiring them to do lot of administrative work or not providing with mobile tools. So, what can an organization do to better support and free up their sales people, so that they can close more sales?
In any organisation sales plays a pivotal role in success of a business. The role of a salesman is to bridge the gap between the potential customer’s needs and the products/services that the organisation offers that can fulfill their needs.
Sales people plays an important role in building the loyalty and trust between customers and business. They are the ones who interact with potential prospects/customers and help a business to grow.
They will bring an organization a range of values which cannot be replaced by any alternative marketing methods. A successful salesman will be passionate about their product/services and be able to explain how it will benefit the client.
A good salesperson can easily cover their costs and add to a company’s bottom line within 6 months of being hired; something which is unlikely to be true of any other position within a company. Successful companies are still very aware of this.
Successful salespeople are those that not only make the sale, but create a long-lasting impact on the customer. Long term customer relationships lead to repeat custom, referrals and increase the brand’s reputation by word of mouth.
How to prospect effectively in B2B Sales
The most crucial part in any sales environment is leads, whether you work for service/product based organization or working for your own business you will find a salesperson always lookout for new leads. Since I have been in B2B sales from the last seven years, I would describe some of the techniques on
The first thing to start with is to understand you prospect data whether you have the right audience, contacts information to target. Make sure to spent enough amount of time to gather all the information about the accounts you are targeting, whether they are the right choice for the service/product you are offering or the business that you want to pitch.
You have to be consistent, that means start setting aside your time and energy to prospect each and everyday. Write a weekly plan making time to prospect everyday. It’s best to get this done the first 3–4 hours when you start you day.
If anyone tells you cold calling doesn’t work these days, asked them to build a effective sales pipeline in a time frame of 90 days and I am sure they will fail on that. No matter if we have AI or Bots will optimize our work processes, one thing that will never change is “People buy from People”
Used every method to reach out to your prospect, whether its email marketing, inbound marketing, networking, trade shows and conferences, direct mail, social networking, or referrals. You should include all of these tools in your arsenal.
Nurture your relationship over time, some of the best deals to close will take long time and you have to be consistent in nurturing these relationships and it will open new opportunity for you over time.
How to Handle your First Sales Job
The first question you will need to ask yourself is, Why do you want a career in Sales? Is it because you have heard how sales people earn a lot on their commission or you are more comfortable in client/customer facing role rather than sitting on a desk job. It may also be that you are fed up with your own job, and you’re considering sales as one of a number of possible career options.
Good News! You don’t need the experience to kick off a career in sales, it’s a profession that welcomes all types of level of work experience. You must be willing to handle the pressure on the job, have that passion & commitment for the role.
First of all you will need to find a mentor whom you can shadow and learn from. Once you find your mentor, ask them about what they have learned over the years. What are the best tactics to get hold of your prospects/customers. How to handle the pressure and though clients.
Before you reach out to any prospects/customers the first thing is you will need to convince yourself that the product/services you are selling will solve not only customer’s problem but also yours. If you don’t believe in your product/services, you won’t be able to passionately sell it to.
The beginning of sales career can end up with lot of frustration with the amount of rejections to handle, not able to find new customer and many other reason. This should not stop you in pursuing your sales career.
You have to be really passionate about your job, need to keep that patience. Remember even salespeople who have been in the business for a decade get rejected once in a while, so don’t let this stop you.
Pick Up the Phone and Start Dialing
If you ask any sales people what is that one hard obstacle you face while prospecting, most of the them will say picking up the phone and start cold calling. As in my experience as well beginning of my career picking up the phone and dialing was a fear thing for me. I always had that fear what would the person on the other end screams, humiliate or reject my offer if I talk over the phone.
It took me sometime to realize that most of the problem can be resolved with one simple behavior. Pick up the phone and stat dialing.
Email is a good form of communication however it doesn’t guarantee every time that your prospect will reply to email or talk about all their problem on long thread chain of email. When you speak some one directly you get to understand their needs, you can work together to solve their problems.
Use you email to reinforce what you had talk over the phone, and keep the process moving forward.
Social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter are also great tool to stay connected with your prospects,customer,potential buyers. However make use of these platform to spread awareness, sharing news letter, latest updates. The real problem connections begin when you speak over the phone, face-to-face or even a video chat.
Make calling a habit:
- If your prospect is not responding to your email, pick up the phone and start dialing.
- If you want to reach out to new potential buyers, pick up the phone and start dialing.
Sales people should always be motivated to cold calls, they should not mind being call an idiot, criticism for fed up prospects. At the end of the day “People will buy from People” not from some bots, Artificial Intelligence or speaking machine.
Start Calling.
How Well Do you Work Under Pressure
Everyone has to deal with pressure at some point of time in their life whether it is on the personal or professional lives. We tend to panic in this situations and likely make a wrong move or decision. This pressure often manifest itself in the form of tight deadlines, demands from your boss, and other obstacle that get in the way of you doing your job.
The question is how well do you work under pressure avoiding stress, how to channel and deal with it in a healthy, productive way.
For me, the first thing is to divide all your task in manageable pieces and then accomplish the pieces. When you start accomplishing these manageable pieces, you can more readily meet goals and feel a sense of accomplishment. Seeing yourself completing the task also builds confidence in yourself.
Ask yourself what needs to be done now, roll up your sleeves and focus on the most important task. Work harder and grind through it, use pressure as an opportunity to grow. The more you find yourself being pushed to the wall, the better you become at pushing back. It’s a natural human tendency! The more you push back, the more your energy expands.
Pressure usually comes because you procrastinate and failed to prioritize and act. Procrastination is simply a habit and it can be broken, ask yourself what you are resisting. Then see if you can give up your resistance and simply act. Interrupting the procrastination habit frequently will lead to a new and more empowering habit of execution.
