Introduction to Sales key skills
“Sales key skills” is the most important skill in your business. If you’re a small business owner, a freelancer or a professional, you need to have sales key skills to uplift your career. In this article, we will give you specific reasons why sales key skills are vital for your growth and we will also talk about how you can develop yourself as an amazing salesman or saleswoman by understanding and learning few fundamentals.
Without much ado, let’s begin with why sales qualities are the most valuable skill you can ever learn as a professional.
Why are sales key skills as a professional skill important?
There are various reasons for which you should learn the ability to do sales key skills. Here are 10 reasons for which you should absolutely let go of learning any other skills and learn sales first.
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Generate revenue directly
Unlike any other skill in business, sales key skills are the holy grail of generating direct revenue. Why the start-up companies first build their sales team before anything else? Because they know if they don’t build a sales team, don’t them the team in the market, don’t make the sales to the customers; then they don’t earn any money. It’s that simple. If you want to earn more or earn your first buck in a business, learn to do sales. Even if you are a fresher and are trying out for interviews, learn how to do sales of your own brand to the interviewers and you will clinch the deal.
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You will learn two most important words of all business
If you are a professional or a business person, two things are most important to you. The first word is for you. If you don’t exist, the business, your career never will exist. The second word is why. You need to know why you are in business and no matter what decision you make, you need to always ask yourself the question – why? In sales, you need to learn both of these words. First is YOU and second is WHY. If you know who you are, how would you describe you in front of the customers and if you can answer why you are doing this, why you’re targeting them as customers and why they would buy from you, all your business questions will be answered.
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You will learn to ask powerful questions
Sales key skills is a series of questions answered well by you for your customers either through ideas or via products and services. Whenever you are in front of the prospect (the prospect can be anyone from the interviewer to the customer in the market), you need to ask a set of powerful questions so that they understand that the number one purpose of your selling is helping them. You may ask that how my question in an interview room will help my interviewer! Your question will help her select you over any other interviewees as the proper fit for the organization.
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Giving value first
Sales key skills are important not because they can make you money or make your ideas become viral. Sales process are important because it gives value even before customers realize this. For example, if you go for an interview and use briefcase technique and offer an analysis of the company’s previous quarter’s sales, would you add value first? Yes, because you are doing it even before the company hires you to do the analysis. Sales is an opportunity to add value in prospect’s life. And that’s why sales key skills are so very important.
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You will learn to deal with rejections
Most people don’t go for sales qualities because they think that they can’t take rejections. But it’s not about the rejections; rather how you handle the rejections and learn from them. For example, let’s say you’re in an interview and you’re being asked what would be your expectation?
You said a number and the group of interviewers said – Too high! Instead of feeling rejected, show them a report of people who are in the same position and the average of their salaries per anum. Once you show it to them, they can’t say you’re asking for too much. And they will buy your price. And guess what you will learn to deal with the greatest setback of all sales and of all business. And that is to learn to deal with rejections.
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You will gain tremendous confidence
“Sales is not for everybody” – they say. But everyone is selling. The thing is we don’t want to be sold; rather we want to buy. It’s a more psychological thing than a real one. And while selling when you can create the perceived value in their psyche for your products and services and they buy from you, you will gain tremendous confidence in your professional life.
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Distraction has increased thousand-fold
Whenever we are logging into Facebook, Twitter or YouTube, we would see a series of ads and people seem to make a living out of giving ads everywhere. Why? They want to sell. But the value of sales is not in trying to be everywhere, but being able to do the right positioning. Thus in this age of massive distraction, it’s more important to learn the ability to do sales. It’s now important that marketers and professionals realize that sales are not trying to get the attention of customers; rather trying to speak to their beliefs and values and meeting their inherent needs. And learning sales as a skill is thus very much necessary.
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The power of stretching
Sales qualities will push you to be more than you are now. If you learn sales, every day would be a new day of learning. You will meet varied people from different cultural backgrounds, professions, ethnicity, language, and way of communication. You will learn how to talk, how to deliver the presentation, how to promote your own brand (if it’s just you) and how to stretch yourself to call another prospect at the end of the day. If you learn and do sales, everything else would become significantly easier. Sales qualities can be termed in the following phrase – a skill which teaches you how to push the envelope.
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Teach you to concentrate on next
In most cases, when we’re rejected or we failed at things, we get stuck. But if you learn sales, it’s quite different. You will eventually learn to say ‘next’ after you hear ‘no’, instead of going into your room and sleeping under your blanket. You will fight the urge to be comfortable and you will really be able to embrace discomfort and move on to next for better result.
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Communication & Negotiation
You will learn a lot about communication and negotiation. You will learn the different set of pitching, presenting, dealing with rejection and negotiating on the price when your customers when they say it’s higher than it should be. Learning sales will bring in a lot of positive change within you. Immediately you will not realize, but eventually, you will understand that what a transformative this skill really is.
As you learn the above, keep a list handy with you so that whenever you feel rejected you can read the list and motivate yourself and go back to work again. That’s right. You will learn best by doing.
Now we will articulate how you would be able to develop the skill set of selling. Let’s find out how.
How to develop an ability to do sales?
We will not give you any formula for selling. Rather we will tell you how it should be done. Let’s take a popular scenario like selling a pen to a customer. Suppose, you’re a salesman in a retail store! A customer walks in and he grabs a bunch of pens from the pen-stand. As he is looking at all the pens you come to him and introduce yourself – “Hi! I am (your name)! How can I help you?”
Now we will give you two scenarios in the way you deal with a potential customer. In the first scenario, we will see the usual scenario which is done by most of the salesmen. And in the second scenario, we will see how to make a sale.
Usual scenario
You go to the potential customer and start to show different kinds of pens and he says – No, not this one. Nope, not this one either. And finally, after a few minutes, he walks out of the store without buying any pen. This is what mostly happens in the stores, market and in interview boards. Do you think it would be redundant to say that this approach doesn’t work?
The scenario that helps to sell the pen
As the customer keeps searching for the right pen, you introduce yourself and ask how you can help him. He says he is looking for a pen. Instead of asking what pen you’re looking for, you ask – “When do you write?” He says – “I write in the morning; sometimes, in the office for reports or making my agenda before work or meeting; and in the night before I go to sleep.” You then ask – “What sort of pen you use when you write in the morning, in the office or at night?” He says – “I write in a fountain pen in the morning, I love it in the morning. I write in a “use and throw” pen in office. And at night, I love gel pen.” You say – “That’s great. What are you looking for now?” He says – “I am looking for a “use and throw” pen.” So, you go ahead and pull out a pen and say to the customer – “Try this. This is cheap and within just $5, you can grab 10 of them. It will save cost for your company and you will be able to take the benefit of writing.” The customer tries writing with the pen and picks up a bunch of pens and went away saying thank you to you.
In the second scenario, you haven’t tried to do anything special. But it is much different than the first scenario. In the first scenario, it’s just trying to sell your potential customer whereas, in the second scenario, it is more of asking questions and understanding what customers want.
Process of sales
From the above hypothetical situation, we saw a pattern and if any salesman or saleswoman uses that pattern will be the successful majority of the time.
Here’s the acronym of the pattern – AQAL.
Most salespeople go there and try to force potential customers to buy their products and services instead of understanding what the potential customers want. Those salespeople talk about the features, benefits, and advantages of the product and services and when potential customers don’t buy they wonder what went wrong.
Selling is not about talking about you and product. But selling is all about AQAL i.e. ask questions and listen. That’s it.
Whenever you’re going to the market, instead of telling about your product and services, ask customers what they want to buy and why? If it matches with the product you’re offering, then ask them to see your product. If they feel interested ask them to buy it. If they say they don’t want to buy because the price is high or the product is not good, ask them what the right price of this according to them is or why they are saying the product is not good! And then even if the potential customers don’t buy from you, you will end up getting some primary research data for making your products and services better.
And finally, sales is a skill which cannot be taught until you practice it by yourself. Even if you are a professional who deals with different clients regularly or a fresher who gives interviews for getting a job, use this technique and see for yourself how easy it would be to do the selling. Majority of the time, you will end up selling your products and services and even sometimes you don’t sell, you will get some extraordinary opportunities to improve your products and services.
Use AQAL and go, practice in the professional field or market or in the retail store or anywhere. Congratulations, you have successfully learned the art of sales qualities.
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