Are you new to sales? Step one is to never show your greenness to your prospective customer, or the deal could go south. Be an expert about what you’re selling, and use the following sales tips to project confidence and nail the sale.
1. Know your customer
A good salesperson knows their prospects’ and customers’ problems better than their prospects and customers do. That’s what catches attention. The prospect thinks “wow, this guy/gal is pretty sharp, I better listen up.”
2. Know your customer’s name
Don’t just know their name, know how to pronounce it. If you forget names easily, write the name down on a blank piece of paper and look at during the call. Say the name many times during the conversation — people like to hear their name.
3. Smile while talking
People buy from people who are happy and excited about what they’re selling. If you’re frowning behind that phone, the person on the other end can usually tell. Keep an erect, confident posture and speak from deep in your belly. Look in the mirror while on the phone and see what you look like. Would you buy from the person in the mirror?
4. You’re going to hear "no"
That’s the game you signed up for. You need to be able to hear way more no's than yesses, and still keep a happy face and press on. Steel yourself as you may hear 100 nos before you get a yes.
5. Just be yourself
People buy from people with personality, not people who read scripts off a computer screen. Have positive energy, and show it, without going overboard. The prospect doesn’t want to know what you ate for breakfast every day this week. They want to know you aren’t a robot.
6. Sell or be sold
When you call someone, either they are going to convince you they don’t need what you’re selling, or you will convince them they do. Who’s going to win? This should be easy if you know your prospects’ problem, and have a product or service that fixes that problem better than anything else on the market.
7. Think of yourself as a teacher
Your job is to teach your prospect why choosing you and your product is the right choice. Lead them to the right answer, don’t just tell them.
8. Don’t show up and throw up
It’s a conversation with another human, and it goes both ways. You should control the conversation by asking questions, not regurgitating the features and benefits you read in your training manual. If you are doing most of the talking, stop. You need to be asking more questions and listening.
9. Believe in what you sell
If you don’t truly believe that what you want someone to open their wallet for is going to help them, don’t sell it. Get a new job. It will be better for them, and better for you, in the long run.
10. Know the value
If you can’t say in one or two sentences the value your product/service provides, figure out how to say it. When you engage your prospect, they ask themselves “what does this product/service do better than the competition, and why is this the best deal?” The answer to that is the value, and it needs to be good! If you can’t express it confidently, and in a genuine manner, you’ll never win.
