7 Golden Selling Skills All Sales Professionals Must Develop in 2018

Sales | by Patricia Jones

As a sales expert, there are 7 key selling skills that you must develop, which are prospecting, creating rapport, finding out the needs, laying out the solutions, answer objections, finalizing the sale and getting referrals and reselling opportunities. These key selling habits proceed in order.

Hence, regularly thinking about each of these 7 elements, which are essential to the sales process, and how they can be enhanced, is the only key to increasing your revenue, sales and profitability.

#1. Find the ideal customers

To achieve greater success in sales, you should spend more time nurturing people who are better prospects. For this, you must look around for new prospects and remain busy looking for new businesses 80% of your time. Never relax in your prospecting efforts. Keep on prospecting morning, noon, and night; unless you develop so many customers that you do not have enough time left in the day, to satisfy and sell all the people who want to buy your products or services.

#2. Focus persistently on building relationships

The second most important habit for finding success in sales is to develop a keen habit of focusing on the relationship building before anything else. Right from the first contact, you must focus on establishing trust, rapport, and credibility with each of your prospects, since most successful sales reps devote as much time as necessary for establishing trust with their customers. Winning sales reps are those who ask an intelligent question to their prospects and listen attentively to the answers. Some even use a CRM platform as they seek to understand their customer’s situation and needs even before they go ahead and attempt to discuss their products or services.

#3. Clearly identify the needs

The third greatest habit of excellent salespeople is that they develop a habit of asking questions and then identify the real needs of their prospects related to what they are selling in the market. It has been found, that most of the prospects are seldom aware that they can improve their work situation or their life when the primarily meet you. This is the exact reason why prospects often say things such as, “I cannot afford it,” or “I am not interested,” or “We are very happy with our present situation or suppliers.” However, if you probe and ask more questions, ask about the customer’s situation and then when you start linking your products or services to those needs, the more customers start learning about what you can offer and eventually buys your products or services.

#4. Be persuasive

The fourth key habit, which every successful salesperson must develop, is the habit of presenting logical, creative, and well-thought-out presentations of all the features and benefits of their products and services. Once you have identified the prospects that can benefit from what you are selling, after establishing a level of rapport and trust and identifying their requirements, your presentation is where you can show your prospects why it makes sense for the prospects to act on your recommendations.

#5. Handle objections effectively

The fifth golden key to effective selling lies in creating the habit of resolving concerns and answering objections in a competent and confident manner. You can only excel in doing this, once you are capable of thinking through all the conflicts, the objection that a qualified prospect can make, and thereafter ideate a logical and complete answer to handle each of these objections and so keep yourself ready as, and when such situations arise. The crème de la crème, sales professionals always develop a completely clear and logically sustainable “bulletproof answers”, so that when it is needed they can easily put their prospects concerns to a rest.

#6. Ask for the decision

The sixty most vital part of selling is developing the habit of asking the prospective customer to make a buying decision. Since, no matter how strong your presentation is or how high is the level of credibility and trust that is there between you and your prospects, all prospects face their moments of tension or stress before making a buying decision. Therefore, as a good salesperson, your job is to move professionally and quickly through this stressful moments and request the prospects for their orders in a confident manner to wrap up the sale.
In fact, the best of the sales professionals plan their winning closes well in advance. What they do is that they watch for the buying signals from the prospects, make certain that there are no lingering objections and then promptly as the prospect to take action right away in a straightforward manner.

#7. Ask for referrals and cultivate re-sales

To conclude, top sales professionals never forget their customers even after the sale, but develop the habit of proactively asking for referrals from their happy customers. This habit of thinking in terms of referrals and re-sales is the key to high profitability and soaring income both for the salesperson and their organization. Repeat businesses are what makes companies grow.
According to a survey by BIAKelsey: “Sixty-one percent of SMBs report that more than half of their revenue comes from repeat customers.”