Techniques Used by Successful Sales Reps
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As a sports fan, I like to compare being successful in sales to being successful in boxing. You always have a main goal that you’re working towards, but your approach is varied based on how your opponent is responding to you.
So whether you’re trying to knock out your opponent in boxing or close a sale in business, understanding that there are multiple ways to achieve your end goal is important because it allows you to be flexible and have many backup plans.
Similar to boxing, sales is also about playing the long game more so than the short game, unlike what most people might think. You might knock down your opponent in round one, but unless you’re the last one standing at the very end, it doesn’t matter. Comparatively, playing long-term moves in sales will allow you to not only keep a satisfied client but grow your business's success.
So let’s look at what some of these key strategies along the sales journey look like to be a successful sales rep:
- Structured goals: Make sure these goals are set to targets that will be able to push you each day. Consistency is important in sales, so keep yourself accountable to these goals.
- Identifying the right prospects: Not only is this about tracking what types of people would be the best potential customers, but making sure you actually reach out to them to start this connection. Don’t wait around for them to come to you. Go out and make it happen yourself.
- Building a connection: Really understand the potential client on a personal level. Talk about things that you both can relate to so that trust can be developed.
- Understand their challenges: Know what their company truly needs and how your product can help satisfy that. Make sure you’re actively listening to their pain points.
- Present your unique solutions: It’s important to do this in an honest, confident, smiling and slow-talking way by focusing on what makes your company different from the rest (your competitive advantage). Also, know when to say “No” if the match doesn’t fit. Building a community doesn’t come from maximizing your profit but from caring about your customers beyond your business.
- Emphasize decision-making: It doesn’t make sense to waste your time on callers you know you likely won’t be able to actually close a deal with. The longer people are indecisive, the less likely they are to buy. Have them understand the benefits of being able to close a deal early so they can make a decision faster.
- Aim for appointments: There’s nothing like the real-life, in-person interaction of doing business. It’s hard to go through this process and especially close a deal virtually, so trying to get an in-person meeting would make things a lot more personal with the potential client.
- Follow up and listen: Maintain the relationship you had with the client. Extended beyond the initial interaction, making sure that you’re not just in touch for the business transactions but truly care about each other being successful long-term. Not only is it important to have these strong relationships in life, but this can be leveraged in the future as a form of upsell or to better improve your credibility and likeability. Better yet, it could help your business grow by people sharing their positive experiences with you, allowing you to receive new clients.
And throughout this sales process, it is not simply these technical skills that great sales reps display. In fact, the truly successful ones embody a few key mindsets (soft skills) that help them rise above the pack. It’s one thing to be very technically strong in your approach (hard skills), but to have long-term success, these are the things that the best sales reps personify:
- Responsibility: When something is promised to anyone else, they make sure to follow through. When a mistake is made, they take full ownership of it. There are no excuses made that blame external circumstances. Successful salespeople have the self-discipline to focus on what they can control and build trust in this way with customers.
- Emotional intelligence: They understand how to be charismatic by having lighthearted conversations with customers. They explain difficult concepts in simple terms, are always available to ask questions, and adjust their approach based on how customers react or feel due to certain information. To understand this, they prioritize in-person interactions and care deeply about developing long-lasting relationships with customers.
- Efficiency: Not only do they focus on developing their sales strategies, but they also use sales analytics to set goals and improve as salespeople. To be even more efficient, they optimize their time management by prioritizing account planning and other bigger, higher priorities in their business.
- Antifragility: In a profession where you will likely fail more than you succeed in getting a deal, the best-performing sales reps don’t simply recover from it, but greatly improve from failures. They look at it as an opportunity to internalize why they were rejected without feeling self-judgment, and then plan out deliberate action steps to avoid these mistakes the next time.
Salespeople are as much artists of relationships and they are savants of conversation. They are as much technically proficient as they are in their soft skills.
So by implementing these strategies to improve both interpersonal and intrapersonal skills, out will emerge the next great sales rep! 🥳
