I recently wrote a post with some golden marketing tips – 26 in total – which came from a post I published on LinkedIn (connect with me if you’d like), asking my network to contribute to a list of marketing tips I started. Contribute they did, and we came up with a great list of marketing wisdom – you can access it here.
Earlier this week I did it again, this time for Sales and without starting the list. Here below, the Sales Tips form the Sales Pros on my LinkedIn network.
Enjoy!
The Sales Tips
From David Parry
Apart from thorough planning, well-defined processes, personal professionalism and a good playbook, the best sales people and teams that I have worked with focused on:
- Knowledge – (internal and external);
- Skills – related to the particular type of sales they are involved in (e.g. AM vs BDM);
- and Activity – quality, quantity, direction & timing.
Apart from all that, great leadership, teamwork and motivation.
Oh and I almost forgot, tenacity!
David Parry
From Matt W – Webster
Quick sales tip from me would be: be honest, curious and determined.
Matt W – Webster
From James Stacey
Struggle – connecting with the right prospect, pipeline is lifeblood!
Three aspects that have made a huge difference to the level of success I personally have had are:
- Listen, make sure you’re not just hearing, as well as doing all the talking. Truly take onboard view points, and then check your understanding.
- Question, identify how and importantly if you can add value. Surface questioning, and don’t be too cautious to help identify deep PAIN with appropriate questions.
- Get clear next steps – never leave a call, conversation, meeting, email, etc without understanding what needs to happen next to move the process along.
From Ram Vadlamani
Pick that phone up, speak and meet people over and over again and work smart.. for questions are the answers!
Ram Vadlamani
From Joby Read
I struggle finding time to sell, with Recruitment once you do well with sales the jobs take up all your time. So I think consistency is very important, finding time to do some every day, and following things up when they really need it.
Persistence is also I think a very important attribute, you might not be the world’s best salesperson, but if you keep at it, and keep nipping away, eventually you will call at the right time.
Joby Read
From Till Kerner
Constancy!
Till Kerner
From Richard Tack
Sales is actually a much bigger beast than to give one or two pieces of advice, but I shall try.
Throughout my career, I have learned pretty much all of my skills, techniques, style and methodology from others around me. However, being yourself and using your own personality to engage with others makes the biggest difference in Sales. I have not yet met a truly outstanding sales individual who lacks a strong personality.
If you want to really progress in sales, keep striving to do more and constantly challenge yourself to get out of your comfort zone.
One challenge I give you is to find a charity where you have to go into the high street and engage people to sign up a form, donate some money or help volunteer etc – this will be scary for most. But, this will rekindle your drive for engagement and force you to learn very quickly to adapt to many different types of people and situations.
Richard Tack
My tip
The Mindset
Sell sell sell. When it’s all said and done, you have to sell. No selling, no cash; no cash, no business; no business, no you… Okay, a bit dramatic, maybe, but you get my point. An incredible number of people start a new business and work extremely hard to build something remarkable and kill themselves to get everything right. Then they ruin it all by not selling – not as in they failed to win business, they don’t freaking try. They don’t sell. They say bullshit like: “My customers are different”, and “My company doesn’t do selling the way others do, it’s word of mouth”. You can be sure you’ll see these people change their ‘passion’ a few times before retiring into employment or building something that just scrapes through and keeps them prisoners of the weekly 7am networking events. All because they failed to sell.
It’s not a skill problem, it’s not a time problem, it’s not a resources problem. It’s a mindset problem. The mindset I know most people adopt is that of fear. Fear of rejection. Fear of the ‘No’. Wake up and smell the coffee, my friend. There will always be more ‘no’s than there will be ‘yes’es. This is as true for new starters as it often is for larger businesses and agencies. Irrespective of what you’re selling, there will always be way more people who don’t buy what you sell than those who do. If there are a bunch of people in a room, all of whom could buy from you, the majority won’t. This is the nature of the selling game, most prospects will say no, leaving only a small percentage of your prospects who say yes. It’s the way outbound sales works. It’s a numbers game, and you need to be comfortable hearing ‘no’.
Done 🙂
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