Five Sales Training Tips for the Desktop Warrior

OK, let’s be clear from the beginning: this article has five tips for the 21st century salesman who works from his desktop to achieve better sales – they are not tips on how to give sales training, but from people who conduct sales training themselves.

This article provides five simple tips to bring your work under control and actualize your sales. So here goes:

1.Recapture your time – All the new tools and software your bosses are throwing at you keeps inundating you with data and pulling you in a million directions at the same time. Get rid of the distractions and recapture your time to spend it proactively for new business opportunities, not for sorting old data – delegate to someone who loves counting numbers and not counting sales.

2.Use your email and voice messaging to full effect – People don’t have time to talk, and it’s not always possible to do the job under three minutes. So, break up the message in formats where the target can access them when he/she is interested and has time. Learn to use emails and voice mails to their full effect – don’t pour out everything in a single mail, but use a series of short emails, voice messages, and direct phone calls to get things done. Because, no one can give you so much time, nowadays, at a single sitting. But, reserving your best only for physical meetings is a mistake. Spread your sales strategy throughout the short bits of different modes of communication.

3.Don’t waste time with those who are not decision makers – Companies give fancy titles to people just to act as foils and steer off distraction. You can’t blame them. But learn quickly to spot people who do not have the power to make a purchase decision. It’s awful to spend a month after a fancy title holder, he keeps on asking for new proposals and better estimates only to learn he’s not the guy who takes the decision, or has any say on the matter. If you go for a kill, find the throat at first shot, don’t poke around everywhere.

4.Develop your questioning skills – When you ask the right questions, you build trust and confidence of the target in your expertise. When you have only a few seconds with big decision makers to ask questions, learn to ask questions that can help you lead a sale to a close. This is very important.

5.Get rid of all assumptions – In wars, in the court, and on the sales front, nothing is as bad as letting your mind be controlled by assumptions. Focus on the task of getting sales done and get rid of all assumptions, because only by getting rid of assumptions, you would start to ask questions, and then be able to find what is paining the target. To learn to listen, you need to learn how to get rid of assumptions.

These five tips would set you on the path to becoming a great salesperson, while you need to control your campaigns from behind the desktop. Take your time to read over these sales training tips and if you are in the profession, you’d know these comprise five most important skills you can develop to find success.