Sales has a reputation for being a high-pressure hustle. Not for the faint-hearted, being a successful salesperson requires resilience and tenacity like no other role in the business.
As times have evolved, sales is, for the most part, less direct. We talk of ‘social selling’ and working your network, building relationships and being able to play the long game – this is all now critical in a more competitive world where everyone has online visibility and it is no longer just enough to pick up the phone…
So, what essential skills set successful sales professionals apart? Based on our experience, we’ve identified five key abilities that are crucial for thriving in today’s competitive landscape.
A little context
Our founders have written two books based on over 20,000 hours of research and comparative analysis to identify the secrets of successful selling (The Salesperson’s Secret Code) and leadership (The Leader’s Secret Code).
This blog refers to ’Destination Beliefs’ which are one of the outcomes of this work. They are 5 core beliefs held by all salespeople to varying degrees. The level of their performance affected whether these beliefs had been achieved or were still aspirational but essentially their ‘secret code’ was underpinned by:
- Fulfilment
- Control
- Resilience
- Influence, and
- Communication
1. Trustworthiness
Surely being trustworthy isn’t a skill? Perhaps it’s more of a trait, but being able to demonstrate it is a skill and involves certain other important capabilities that every salesperson needs to come equipped with in today’s market.
Relationships are key to doing successful business and they cannot exist without trust. Taking time and understanding how to build such relationships is key to creating the network that all sales professionals need to surround themselves with. People do business with people they know. Like and trust. It’s never been more prevalent in the way buyers search for their suppliers. If you need more evidence of this, check out the Edelman Trust Barometer, now in it’s 24th year and showing a worrying decline in how much people trust our institutions. Business remains the only trusted entity, with the media, government and NGOs perhaps not surprisingly having lost the trust of the majority.
Trust is inextricably linked with several of the destination beliefs we discovered when carrying out our research for The Leader’s Secret Code: communication, influence and control can only happen effectively when someone is in a position of trust.
2. Communication
No surprises here but the interesting point when it comes to communication is the different types – and therefore skills – that sit within this umbrella.
It may be that the advent of virtual selling has magnified this need, but questioning and listening are right at the top of essential skills for salespeople. The better they communicate, the more conversations and ideas they explore, the more opportunities they can uncover.
Questioning and listening are critical. Authenticity, in terms of what is said and it being backed up by behaviours, is also very important.
3. Articulating Value
When it comes to articulating value there are several things to consider. Obviously, knowledge of the product or service is paramount but also knowing what your customer wants and needs is equally important. We work in a world that is constantly changing and evolving and our customers’ needs are part of that. Having sufficient understanding and dialogue to anticipate what the customer needs next is a skill which brings a true differentiation for a sales professional.
As part of The Salesperson’s Secret Code, we interviewed ten ‘iconics’ – individuals who not only performed highly in the sales arena but who were generally felt to have ‘a certain something’. We wanted to understand what made them tick and what we could learn from their approach.
Eight of them specifically mention understanding, or being close to, your clients as part of the recipe for high-performance in sales. It’s this relationship that creates the opportunities if you know how to articulate the value you can add to your clients and prospects.
4. Pitching and Presenting
We can hear the groans even as we add this skill to the list… death by PowerPoint used to be the fear, and although these days there are many far more dynamic ways to pitch to your audience, this is still a skill that often gets left out.
Perhaps it’s considered a given that people can do it; maybe it’s the thing that no one ever has time for; whatever the reason, it’s a hurdle that still trips many sales professionals up. It overlaps with many of the other skills we’ve mentioned, requiring strong communication and interpersonal skills in order to get it right.
You can wade through pages of theory on the psychology of the pitch but the skills which can make a real difference here are emotional intelligence and self-awareness.
Reading the room, knowing your audience and being able to adapt your presentation are powerful skills because every pitch will be different. Arguably, this should never be the first conversation in your sales process, so spending most of your time on the minutiae is at worst boring and at best unnecessary.
Carrying out a dry run of your presentation can prove very useful but take care to do so realistically. We’ve blogged before about how we’ve used Real Play with clients to help them really nail their skills in this area.
5. Negotiating
This vital skill may well be the most feared in the sales world. Again, preparation and research is everything. Knowing your client, their boundaries and their challenges will make the difference in the final negotiations, as will fully understanding your own margins and available options.
It’s another skill that crosses over with the rest of our list: communication skills and the nature of your relationship with your audience is of paramount importance, as is the level of trust and authenticity you have managed to build with them.
To conclude…
In summary, we could have picked many different skills to focus on but, here at Transform Performance, experience has shown us that these are the most common. How they relate to individual organisations does vary and that’s why we have created our Development Prioritiser tool. It enables us to seek input from our clients and understand what their own unique mix of top skills looks like and then we can tailor training around this precise formula.
As with everything in business, sales is a people focused activity and, for as long as people make the decisions, they need to be met by people delivering the messaging. Training must be bespoke to provide good value so if you see something on this list that you feel needs improving, think carefully about how to go about that. Not all salespeople are created equal but to be a high performer, you definitely want to follow your own unique journey to find the best version of yourself.
Interested in sales development? Read our tips on how to engage your most experienced sales veterans, and see an overview of selected sales improvement programmes. You can reach us via the contact page or call +44 (0) 1488 658686.
