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Become a Sales Superstar
| 10 Critical Areas to Master |
By Voss Graham |
Becoming a sales superstar is ALL about the choices you make as a
salesperson. There is good and bad news to this statement. First the
bad, what got you here today will not necessarily make you a sales
superstar tomorrow. Now for the good news, you can be a sales superstar
if you start making choices today – like a sales superstar.
Sales superstars don’t just suddenly show up or arrive out of nowhere.
They design their paths to superdom using hard work and thinking about
their choices ALL THE TIME! They develop a winner’s edge on the mental
side and learn the skills to insure winning. So, how do they do this?
By working on ten critical areas that create sales success in today’s
highly competitive world. To become a sales superstar, you must decide
to improve your skills in these ten critical areas:
1. Learning – Sales superstars
have one thing in common – they are always learning. Their learning can
take several avenues. One, they learn about their customers, in depth,
so they can understand the current and future situations they will
face. They are also readers. Remember this – leaders are readers! They
read about selling, business trends, leadership issues, economic trends
and industry trends. They are the first to sign up for extending
training and development sessions. They know that they need to sharpen
their skills everyday – if they want to keep winning in the game of
selling.
2. Business Acumen – In the
modern world of selling, salespeople MUST be able to speak in terms
that are important to customers and especially the “C” level customers.
These terms are the world of Business Acumen – revenue growth, cost of
goods sold, gross margin, related costs, turnover ratios, velocity and
net income. If you are just talking about features and benefits – you
are in the world of commodity selling and price alone rules.
3. Preparedness – Like the Boy
Scout motto, Be Prepared, top salespeople know that customer research
is done before meeting with customers. You validate what you have
learned while in the presence of customers – which shows the customer
that you are different and will not waste their valuable time. Using
web search engines to find information about your customers, their
customers, financial data and trends – allow you to be more
knowledgeable than your competition.
4. Industry Knowledge – This
should be a no-brainer, however, you will still find sales people with
little industry understanding. To be a sales superstar, knowing the
industry is a requirement. It assists you in understanding trends,
cycles, what is old or new, best practices, and who are their
customers. Industry knowledge allows for knowing the little secrets of
success and most importantly the ability to anticipate trends within
the industry –allowing you to guide the customer to better decisions
about their business.
5. Questioning Skills – Here is
the big one. Most sales people talk too much. Yes, they talk too much
and actually bore the customer. Why? Because the customer will have
opinions about things and they will Believe Their Thoughts over Yours!
This is a form of bias, yet, the best sales people have learned this
fact. They use questions to uncover these biases, use different
questions to guide or educate the customer, and even different types of
questions to learn what specific benefit or advantage certain solutions
would provide for that specific customer. The key is using questions to
become customer centric rather than boasting about what you think you
know. This is a required skill in modern selling, this is the land of
the sales superstar and they have learned the importance of this skill...
continue...
More about Voss Graham
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