The SMART Steps to Increase Sales

Like so many things we learn on all types of training courses to improve our skills, sales is no different. The answer to the old age question of ‘are salespeople born or taught’ in my opinion is obvious. Definitely sales people can be taught.

Day in and day out the skills of sales are taught successfully to thousands of delegates on sales training courses throughout the country. I would not dispute in any way that certain people have a natural ability to communicate with other people and influence them in their decision making, and we would then assume they would make good salespeople. However that is not necessarily correct all the time, neither is it correct that these people whom we believe are excellent communicators do not need to attend sales training courses.

To be effective in sales there s a process that you must adhere to, on sales training courses this is often referred to as ‘the sales cycle’

The first step of the cycle is to have clearly defined goals of what you are trying to achieve and why you are trying to achieve it. As the old saying goes ‘If you don’t know where you are trying to get to, it matters not what road you take’

It is often said that goals should be SMART, the word SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time framed.
The clearer you can define the goal the easier it will be for you to achieve. As a salesperson, not only should you be setting goals for the number of sales you need, but you should be also thinking of the number of prospects, enquiries meetings etc that will create the sale.

As a manager, in order to improve your team’s performance in sales you should also be using the SMART acronym to look at you or your teams needs in sales training. Sales training courses can help you establish the areas needed for improvement-maybe members of your team need help in building rapport, possibly it could be questioning and listening, some people fall down with their sales closing skills by not asking for the order whilst others find it difficult to overcome objections.

Whatever the specific need you have for sales training you should still use the Acronym SMART for each specific area of sales for your teams own self improvement. For example if closing is a problem set goals using the SMART principle to overcome the difficulty you are having.

Whatever specific problems you or your sales team are encountering in producing the level of sales you need, the first step to the sales process is the SMART step---you must know what you are trying to achieve, and with good sales training courses you can achieve it.