“He is a born salesperson”.
You must have heard this phrase often for a person with enviable sales skills. It is true that some people have the natural ability to fit into a sales role, these skills aren’t genetic. The way one can adapt to leadership skills and others, one can learn sales skills as well.
Modern marketers and sales people must master certain sales skills to perform optimally and achieve success in their sales role. These skills are also the most transferable and sought-after, irrespective of the industry or company the salespeople belong to.
As per a LinkedIn Talent Report, 92% of the talent professionals say that soft skills are more useful than hard skills when hiring sales reps. These skills are crucial in building and closing deals.
One must understand that these skills are evolving. The winning sales skills you learnt a decade ago are stale today. The disruptors like technological change, pandemics and changing customers’ needs change the way we do sales.
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Let us walk you through some of the top digital sales skills for 2022 and beyond:
1. Technical Skills
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Product knowledge
Whether you are selling a product or service, it is essential to know your product well. Do not worry as your sales training program will give you required resources to know your product well, but it is up to you to become an expert at this.
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Strategic prospecting
This means identifying sales prospecting tactics in an efficient way. The skill will demand a strategic approach to finding and building relationship with a prospect. It can be done with the help of social selling, email marketing, and quality content creation.
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Social selling
57.6% population of the world is active on social media. Nearly, 4.55 billion people are active on social media throughout the world. This is one of the reasons why social selling is one of the most demanding sales techniques today.
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Ability to adapt to new technologies and tools
The pandemic disrupted the way we worked in an unexpected way. This was the time when remote selling and interaction via chats and video conferencing became the norm. Modern Sales reps must adapt to new technologies and tools that make them more effective in their roles.
Right from emailing, lead prioritization, lead enrichment, lead distribution to scheduling meetings and reporting, everything comes under sales automation. Some of the top sales automation tools every sales rep should be used to are:
- HubSpot or CRMs that are all-rounder Sales platforms
- SalesBlink for domain search, sales pipeline, CRM and many more
- MailChimp for email automation
- Lemlist for cold email outreach
- EngageBay for all-in-one marketing and CRM, and more!
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Post-sale relationship
Now this is crucial. You interact with a prospect, turn it into a lead, then they become a valuable customer. What is the next step? A good sales rep will always ensure that the company-customer relationship survives.
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We call it a post-sale relationship.
2. Human Skills
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Time Management
After discussing the hard skills, we narrow down our discussion to soft skills, and we start with time management. The expression ‘time is money’ has never been truer than when you are into a role of a salesperson. The calculation goes like, all the ineffective time spent in sales equals to lost revenue.
Master the art of making the most of your time if you want to be a successful sales person.
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Active Listening
It is true that the job of sales person revolves around talking about products and services, but he should also be an active listener. Your buyers must know that you are listening to them. Thus, active listening is a trademark of a good sales person.
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Communication
Good communication skills have always been in demand, and for a sales person, it is inevitable to have. What is a point of knowing everything about the product, but not having the ability to convey the value proposition to the client?
Powerful communication skills help in establishing long-lasting relationships with customers, after all.
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