Professional development is essential for salespeople, but what do you need to do to ensure that you’re continuously improving? Here are our suggestions
1. Attend sales training
An obvious one, but attend sales training. Training and professional development opportunities keep your skills fresh and being a lifelong learner gives you a competitive advantage.
2. Practice role play
You can practice role play on your own with your manager or a coach, or you can find a sales training course that implements role play in the material.
3. Practice public speaking
Even experienced and extroverted salespeople can sometime experience a fear of public speaking. As with most things, practice makes perfect. The more you practice something, the more you get used to it, and the less nervous you’ll be.
4. Find a mentor or coach
Working with a mentor or receiving sales coaching can drastically improve your sales performance. Research from the Sales Executive Council (SEC) examined thousands of salespeople and found receiving quality coaching helped them improve long-term performance by more than 19%.
5. Ask questions
Successful sales people ask questions….. lots of questions. When a sales call doesn’t go the way you thought it would or you get a question or objection you aren’t sure how to respond to, ask your manager, peers, or coach for advice.
6. Review your sales calls
You can learn a lot from reviewing what you did well and what went wrong in recorded sales calls. If you can’t record sales calls, ask your manager or coach to listen into your calls and provide feedback.
7. Prepare for objection handling
During your sales calls, you will get objections and questions about your product or service. That’s why it’s important to be as prepared as possible for those objections and have canned answers ready.
8. Practice different closing techniques
By trying different closing techniques, you’ll continue to iterate and improve your skills. Test differnt versions out to assess which are the most effective.
9. Track your progress
The best way to improve your sales skills is to track your progress. Set sales goals and record your performance every week or month, look for positive and negative changes to understand what’s working and what’s not.
10. Improve your listening skills
In order to be an effective salesperson, you must hone the art of active listening. Typically, when a prospect is talking, you might be thinking of your response and generating answers to questions in your head. Instead, truly pay attention when your prospect is talking. Repeat what they said and ensure you’re understanding them correctly. This helps you really understand what their problem is and whether or not you can solve it for them.
Above all, to increase your sales and improve your performance, consider professional development opportunities. Always be on the lookout for ways to continuously build upon your sales skills and boost your numbers.
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