Sales Advice That Can Make Or Break A Career

Nobody Likes To Be Sold

People hate to make the wrong decisions and, even more, people hate to be pressured. Therefore, sales professionals have to be careful not to overdo it. As a business development professional, you must let the sale come to you. By doing so, you will not look desperate and, thus will stand out from the majority of your competition.

Remember. There is an inverse relationship between the amount of pressure you put on a prospect and the chance of them buying a product or service from you. Patience is a huge virtue in sales, albeit a hard virtue.

Establish Authority via Several Avenues

In sales, the ability to establish authority is one of the most important skills a business development professional can have.

Dress - There is nothing more persuasive than a nice suit with a well put together person behind it. Buyers look at sales professionals who are dressed nicely as more authoritative than those dressed in plain clothes. Conversely, some believe that dressing similar to the audience can be more advantageous, however there is more evidence to support the former rather than latter.

To tell you a bit further as to how important dress is, we must all remember the study that was conducted decades ago where the lab technician, primarily due to a white coat, was able to coax their subjects into continually electrocuting another individual behind a wall who answered questions incorrectly regardless of the voltage and regardless of how loud they screamed.

Title - The higher the title of the sales professional, the more respect they are apt to receive. For instance, a Sales Director, regardless of skill set, will hold more weight with a potential client than a Sales Manager would. I always advise smaller companies to keep this in mind upon choosing the title for their head of sales.

Using Success Stories - Buyers always want tangible results and, moreover want examples to back up the claims of the sales professional. Remember, this tactic only works with relevant examples (i.e. same industry) or tangible results (i.e. numbers or percentages).

Become An Expert At What You Do And Keep Learning!

In sales, or in any other field, there is no excuse not to continue your education (informal via books are more than fine) get better and continually fine-tune your selling skills. Due to the fact that nearly every product or service has become a commodity, people are going to make their buying choices based on the knowledge and added value that the sales representative attached to the product or service can bring. Win at the expertise game and, most likely you'll win the account.

Questions - Sales Representatives Exist To Solve Problems

Sales representatives, all too often, get in front of a decision maker and immediately start their perfectly rehearsed, slick sounding sales pitch. This is quite ineffective as going back to the first example that "Nobody Likes To Be Sold," will tell you that discussing what you want instead of what the client actually needs is a poor attempt to sell them and, more times than not, will have negative consequences.

Instead, the best sales representatives ask the right questions at the right times, and once they feel comfortable knowing what the client wants, then go into their "pitch." Going this route, as a sales professional, is much more effective and makes you appear more of a problem solver rather than a salesman or saleswoman.

Let your competition throw darts with a blindfold. Be accurate when you speak and maintain the thought process that you are in the meeting to solve a problem - not your problem, either.