To become an excellent sales specialist, you definitely should have indispensable skills from basic to advanced. It will help you be more confident in all communication situations, even with the most difficult client. Let's take a look at the top 10 crucial skills a sales specialist should have with Navigos Search right in this article!
1. In-depth understanding of products/services
First of all, a sales specialist must have an in-depth understanding of the products and services that the business is providing. If you do not know the product well, you will not be able to give advice and convince customers to buy your products, or answer questions during customer use or solve problems from simple to complicated cases.
To acquire this skill, you must research, study and work with all the products of the business for a certain period of time. Besides, you need to define the following subjects:
- What are the important products and what makes them special?
- Prioritize important features to research and experiment with when releasing new products. Then you will know the pros and cons of that product.
Read more: The necessary factors to conquer the recruiter of Sales Director position
A sales specialist need to have an in-depth understanding of the products and services he offers
2. Practice communication skills
If appearance is the first impression in communication, goodwill in sales is the most important key to helping you develop long-term relationships with customers. Just create rapport with customers, surely the chances of successful sales are very high.
Working in this industry, you definitely have to communicate directly and master all forms of communication such as face-to-face meetings, telephone contacts with customers,... Skillful judgment helps you communicate effectively to customers and understand a part of the intentions that customers want, from which you will gain trust from customers.
To hone the communication skills, a sales specialist needs to take advantage of both positive and negative situations that occur at the store. Through those cases, you will learn and draw experience from mistakes to improve your ability to communicate and handle situations. From which, you will develop and maintain strong relationships with customers and help the sales process become more favorable.
3. Identify potential customers
Identifying customers is important for a sales specialist to define marketing goals to improve user experience and increase revenue. In a competitive market, identifying a group of potential customers is a wise move that a sales specialist needs to aim for.
Depending on the industry and business model, create your own criteria to identify potential customers. Identifying the right customers will help you sell smoothly, increase sales opportunities with less time and effort invested in.
Each industry, product and service line will target different types of potential customers. However, you can identify potential customers through the following angles:
- People who regularly use your products/services.
- The person with whom you distribute the product.
- People who share your products with others.
4. Active listening
Listening is an important factor in creating a good relationship between the salesperson and the customer. There is a common mistake most salespeople make which is they only care about the products and services the business offers without paying attention to the opinions of customers. This has made customers feel their needs are not being noticed and they are not being taken care of enough.
Please note that active listening helps you quickly understand the needs of the customer rather than trying to say things that they do not need to know. Only then, the other party will feel they are respected and more willing to listen to your offer to make a purchase.
Therefore, when customers tell you their needs, you need to carefully grasp their expectations and preferences to help them choose the right product. That way, customers feel cared about, respected and satisfied because your product meets their needs.
At the same time, a professional sales specialist will never interrupt someone who is talking because that way they will not be able to determine what the other person wants.
Active listening skills of the sales specialist
5. Questioning skills
One of the effective sales skills that determine whether you could close a deal with customers or not is the skill of asking questions. When interacting with customers, do not just passively let your customers ask and then answer. Take the initiative to ask simple questions to collect information about what customers are looking for in a product to easily advise and consult them to choose the right product.
In order for the product to reach customers naturally, you can actively ask questions related to the nature of their work, their health problems, the need to buy high-class or normal products, .. Or leading questions that could connect with their usage needs.
Thereby, you will give advice and choose more suitable products for buyers. However, you need to make sure that customers will see the advantages and benefits when making a purchase. From there, they feel that they have chosen the right place to buy reliable products.
In a conversation with the customer, a sales specialist must assess the possibility they would buy a product and their reluctance. From which, speed up order closing by asking 50:50 choice questions. Knowing how to ask the right questions will have a great effect on successful sales closing.
6. Ability to multitask
Prioritizing the main task and the ability to multitask are the next required skills of a sales specialist. In many cases, a sales specialist will work with many customers at the same time but still have to make sure to take good care of all of them.
Besides, you also have to perform a lot of different tasks such as taking care of customers, solving problems arising after sales, tracking inventory, understanding competitors' marketing programs and campaigns, ... Therefore, you need to know what your priority is to complete the task excellently.
7. Patient, friendly
Patience is key in the sales profession. In fact, sometimes you have to work with customers who are very slow, it takes a long time for them to make purchases, and you need to adjust your speed to get along with the customers. Not only that, in some cases you might have to run round after round just to find the right product that they like. With those cases, patience will help you handle the situation better.
Sales is a service industry, so a friendly and welcoming attitude is a very first requirement for people in this profession. This is considered the foundation for the remaining sales skills.
Sales services require patience and friendliness
8. Negotiation and persuasion skills
Negotiation is the basic indispensable means of a sales specialist. The communication and sales process is only successful when you negotiate well. Therefore, you need to have a sharp mind, patiently argue and control emotions to negotiate and persuade customers to use your products. At the same time, you also need to focus on what the customer wants and stick with it to the end. Surely you will be able to close the sales successfully.
9. Problem solving skills
One of the most difficult skills for a sales specialist is problem solving and handling situations. With modern sales, you must be the one to solve the problems that customers are having. You need to know how to apply analysis and problem-solving techniques to find the best solution.
For example, if a customer is in need of a laptop, you must ask questions to determine why they need that laptop, is it to serve a personal preference or it is for work. To get this information, you can:
- Offer the most suitable product
- Get an integrated solution that customers never thought of.
- Suggest more products/services that add value to that laptop.
- Determine that there is no product that satisfies customers' needs other than your own product.
In addition, when consulting products and services for customers, you will encounter unexpected situations such as customers who have used the product but then giving negative feedbacks, thinking that the product is more expensive than its real value, or the customer doubts the quality of the product because the price you are offering is cheaper than elsewhere, the customer doesn't really want to make a purchase but just wants to hear your advice,... You can recognize these situations by their attitude while communicating with them.
For example, if a customer thinks a product is expensive, you can provide useful information that the product brings to increase the value of the product. Or make an argument that convinces customers that this product is very suitable and useful for them. You can also convince customers in a way to spread the feeling of having to spend a large amount of money on this product at a time by suggesting how much money they need to spend each day to experience that product..
10. Sales closing skills
Closing sales is understood as the final stage to end the consulting and sales process. After putting efforts into giving advice and consultancy, the final goal of a sales specialist is to make customers decide to buy the product and come back next time.
To be able to do that, you must be equipped with techniques to capture the psychology of customers to close the sale. Closing sales is an important art, you need to skillfully let customers choose products voluntarily, not make them feel forced to buy.
Besides, when closing a sale, you need to keep a few points in mind:
- Do not respond to customers with too much information at the same time to stimulate curiosity about the product.
- Do not focus too much on closing sales, but give dedicated and enthusiastic advice for customers to actively buy your products.
And to close sales effectively, you must pay attention to the signs expressed in words or non-verbals to identify the closing time:
- Clearly see that the customer is interested in a product.
- The customer agrees with the value and the benefits from the product.
- When there is a period of silence.
- Customers show caring gestures such as looking closely at samples, calculating, nodding, and being friendly,…
In addition to the above skills, an excellent sales specialist must also possess other skills such as English communication, proficient use of office applications,..
Successful sales closing skills
Becoming an excellent sales specialist is not easy, you have to enrich your knowledge, gain experience and hone your skills every day. Hopefully the information that Navigos Search shared above will be useful, can help you increase sales, and to help you go further on your career path. Good luck and we wish you success!
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