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Skills, Skills, Skills - Part Three

Skills, Skills, Skills – Part Three

In the last few weeks we have covered six of the nine skills you need to give yourself the best chance of being successful in the sales environment. So here are the missing final three skills and a summary of the nine essentials skills at the end of this article.

Handing Objections

When customers raise an objection most salespeople tend to hate it and try to answer it without first trying to understand what the cause is. There are many reasons a client may raise an objection. It may be they

• Don’t fully understand what you are offering

• are stalling and don’t want to go ahead with an order at the moment

• are using them as part of their negotiating technique

• are feeding back information that they have picked up from you to one of your competitors

• Have a legitimate concern regarding your offering

When it comes to handling objections a salesperson should learn to love them as they can give you an opportunity

• To differentiate your offering from your competitor

• To fully understand your clients requirement

And most importantly they could be buying signals that will tell you what you need to do to win the business.

So how do we handle them? We must answer them and resolve them or the chances are we will not close the sale. Objections are a natural part of the sales process. However, how you respond to them can make or break a sale.

There are several methods but one way is a nice easy three step approach. The first step is that you must clarify exactly what the customer means. The second step and equally important to step one is that you must acknowledge the objection to show to the customer you empathise with them, it doesn’t mean you agree with them but that you understand their concern.

The third step is that you ask the customer to discuss it so that you can answer or resolve their concern. Ask questions to find out what is their concern or concerns and test out a solution.

This is a process that does work and will give you some success in handling objections. However you must not ignore the client’s body language as these might also be throwing out objections.

As a sales team you should be sharing the common objections and how to handle them. You should be practicing them so that when you get an objection you will be prepared to answer them in a professional and successful manner.

Time management

This can be difficult for some salespeople and does not come naturally to some however you must learn how to prioritise you tasks, plans, meetings, calls and sales activities. There are many books available that offer several time management methods and one suggestion is to read a few then pick one that you feel comfortable with.

One simple tip is how to better handle emails so that you don’t waste time during the day reading and replying to unnecessary emails. Why don’t you look at your emails twice a day, firstly at lunchtime and secondly at the end of the day. This gives you time during the day to focus on other sales activities which leads us nicely to the ninth skill.

Focus

The ninth skill is focus, all sales people need to have focus and need to keep their focus.

The thing is there are daily distractions that threaten your focus. They range from emails, phone calls, problems both customer and internal, paperwork and text messages to name a few.

Your objective is to maintain focus on the big picture as well as the smaller details. This can make the difference between you being a good salesperson or a brilliant salesperson.

Your focus applies to all sales activities such as each sales call and meeting by determining your goals so that you focus on achieving your objective.

Summary

So there you go nine essential selling skills:

1. Prospecting
2. Smart Questioning
3. Active Listening
4. Presentation skills
5. Building rapport
6. Persistence
7. Handling Objections
8. Time management
9. Focus

In today’s current economic climate selling successfully requires tremendous effort and energy. However, you can improve your results and win more sales business by developing and applying these essential sales skills.

If you want to improve your sales skills we have several learning opportunities for you including video, training course and events;

Selling skills – our new on-line sales training programme that give you access to some great tips, techniques, and strategies for 12 months. You can find more information at http://www.learnsellingskills.com/sales_training

Introduction to B2B sales a one day course will be running in Newcastle on Friday 18th October. For more information email me at michael@arrowsales.co.uk or phone us at 0191-2267366 or visit http://www.arrowsales.co.uk/training/introduction-to-b2b-sales

For businesses in North Tyneside and in conjunction with The North Tyneside Business Forum and The Business Factory we have a sales event on Thursday 10th October at the Village Hotel. For more information email me at michael@arrowsales.co.uk or phone us at 0191-2267366 or visit http://www.arrowsales.co.uk/sales-training/sales-event—-the-village—-10-october

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Michael McMeekin .