Improve Sales Skills and Increase Sales Revenue
Every business needs to know how to improve sales skills and increase sales volume. The dentist needs to attract more customers, just like the shoe salesman or handyman.
We are all in the business of selling something at any given time. A well-written resume and a good interview are an attempt to land a job. You can spend years in law school, and when you still need to sell your skills to a firm that will give you a chance to practice law.
For the “professional” salesperson, it is vital to learn how to improve sales skills and increase sales volume to succeed. However, anyone and everyone would benefit from improving in this area. Let’s take a deeper look at how to improve sales skills, performance, and volume.
Improve Sales Performance
Improving performance is all about doing what you do better. A runner can run a faster race, a musician can play better, and a salesperson can sell more products and services.
However, the flip side also improves satisfaction for the customers you serve. Do a better job solving their problems, providing outstanding service, and following up with them to ensure satisfaction.
Set Strategic Goals and Clarify the Mission
When you have a clear mission and set strategic goals, you stand on a foundation that will support success. Below are some things you need to think about and write down.
- Vision – What do you want to achieve?
- Values – What is essential about your vision?
- Method/Strategy – How will you accomplish the vision?
- Obstacles – What is preventing you from achieving it?
- Measurement – How will you know you are getting there? (on time)
Once you have this thought out and written down, you can move forward, and if you are a leader, you can use this to support the team and help everyone improve sales.
Motivate and Inspire Performance
Knowing and communicating the vision, values, strategies, obstacles, and measurement tools will motivate you and others to improve performance. Now you took experienced salespeople and equipped them to be motivated and inspired! Sales performance will improve with just this in place. But there is more!
Management Support for the Sales Team
With this foundation in place, management support believes in others more than they believe in themselves until they believe in themselves more. What I mean is you have equipped them and now support them with encouragement, support, and desire for them to succeed. Support will cause your sales performance improvement, and it will fuel the team to do the same.
Encouragement and momentum can catapult a sales team to the next level, and the sales performance and volume will skyrocket with time.
Provide Effective Training and Coaching
When I see the NFL start their pre-season training camps, I know that the best players in the world need to start over with wind sprints, drills, and practice. In sales, it is no different as a salesperson; you and your sales team collectively will benefit from training and coaching.
We need to continue to learn, practice, and accept coaching as we continue to sell. There are new ideas, concepts, and attitudes you can apply to take you to the next level.
When you get new products and services to sell, you need to go back and learn everything there is to know about that product. What are the features and benefits of the product? What problems does it solve for the buyer? What is the competition doing, and what is the unique value that sets this product apart?
We might be out of school, but we continue studying, practicing, and developing new skills in sales.
Increase Sales Volume
Sales volume is about the number of products and services sold during a particular period. In sales, we are always trying to sell more during this period vs. the same time last year. The most straightforward example is knowing how much you sold for Christmas last year and then setting a goal and planning to sell more this Christmas.
It is a way to measure success and indicate if you are growing or declining in sales. This measurement can apply to a single salesperson, sales team, and the whole company. For example, online sales may fall outside the sales team’s results.
Increase Sales Revenue
Another critical measurement is knowing how many products are selling during a period and how much revenue it generates. For example, you may have sold 15,900 products and brought in $38,590 in revenue last Christmas. Then you took a price increase, and this Christmas, you sold 15,900 products but brought in $42,350 in revenue.
The goal is to grow your sales in products (units), revenue ($), and ultimately your overall profits. ($ minus expenses)
If you are a business owner, you are concerned with all three measurements, and if you are a salesperson working for a company, you may need to focus on product sales. (units)
Either way, revenue needs to increase in a healthy business.
Improve Sales Team’s Focus on Selling
To continue this idea, I will say again that the best salespeople and sales teams are free to focus on selling! Meetings, organizational tasks, P&L, and management functions are all essential but know that if your sales team is assigned those things, you will sell fewer products.
Every business is structured differently, and every job has unique circumstances built in, but let your salespeople sell whenever possible!
Increase Product Knowledge
Any great salesperson knows that product knowledge is key to success. When you know (and hopefully use) the product, it becomes easy to show it to potential customers. You can overcome objections, answer questions and offer solutions because you know the outcomes!
- Know how it works with features and benefits
- Know the history of the product and company background
- Know the cost and value vs. the competitive items
- Know “why” your customer needs it
- Know the delivery options and timing
- Know the warranty and guarantees
- Know the upsells and options to upgrade/know when to offer them
- Know that the problem it solves is more valuable than the cost
- Know the fact-based data behind the product
Be Customer Focused and Solve Problems
When you know your products, the next step is to know your customers. Match the right products with your customers, and you will sell more!
Here are a few tips. The person asking the questions is in control of the conversation. As a salesperson, you need to ask good questions and then listen to the answers. Then identify their needs and help them solve their problems with your products and services.
Probing questions do not work 100% of the time, but the best hitters in baseball only hit it 3-4 times out of 10. That same success rate will make you rich!
A big part of improving is knowing what to sell. Get good at helping people the best you can, and you will succeed. Of course, you need great products to sell, but I assume you have that figured out. You can always sell something else if you are representing sub-par products.
Improve Your Calendar and Prioritization
Here is where you can separate yourself from the pack. Get a calendar and then fill it up with appointments. Get out of your office and get out there where the customers are! Schedule meetings, lunches, dinners, coffee meetings, make phone calls and dedicate a large percentage of your day to getting in front of your next customer.
Prioritize your calendar, and you will win. It is a numbers game, and there is no excuse not to get busy.
Improve Sales Productivity
Consistency hammers home the point I was making: productivity matters. If you make ten phone calls and eat at your desk while your counterparts go to the local fast food place to socialize, you will win.
If you never go out to eat unless it is with a potential client, you will win. If you take 10-15 minutes to read and study sales skills while your fellow associates troll Instagram, you win.
We all have more time than we think, so I challenge you to evaluate it. Take your planner and fill it up with productivity. Schedule every moment of your day and fill it up. If you were busy and productive for a total of 8 hours per day, you would be the top salesperson at your company. I almost guarantee it because you have to be busy and good at what you do.
Sales Improvement Plan
Write out a personal improvement plan. Write out your goals and schedule them in your daily planner. Plan to win, and you have a much better chance of doing it. Simple. (not always easy but simple)
Align Sales and Marketing Departments
Suppose you are part of a company with a sales and marketing department. I recommend working together. Marketing plans are great, and they become more remarkable when the sales team understands them and knows how to use them to sell more stuff.
Sales and marketing can develop powerful campaigns that teams can maximize with better communication. Marketing should ask sales how customers are reacting, and sales should ask marketing to coordinate efforts. Let’s all work together!
Use Data and Fact-Based Selling in Presentations
Be over-prepared and ready for anything. Do your homework and bring the data to a sales meeting. When your customer asks the hard questions, you will most likely answer to their satisfaction with data and facts.
With the internet and information at everyone’s fingertips, your customers are coming to your meeting more prepared than ever. Most likely, they have researched your products and the competition’s products.
Those days are over, and they should be! There is no pulling the wool over their eyes with slick slogans and empty promises. Do your homework and provide actual value to your customer with facts and figures.
Be Accountable for Follow-Up and Follow Through
Lack of follow-up may surprise you, but over half of the salespeople in this world fail to follow up with their customers. If you make that follow-up phone call to see if they have decided you have put yourself in the top tier of salespeople.
Cha-Ching! Call to see how they are doing. Call to see if you can answer any questions. Call to offer them a better deal. Call to close the sale! Do these things, and your sales performance and revenue will go through the roof. You will be a rockstar if you do the basics.
Accomplish Success by Showing Up
I will close with the idea that winning is primarily showing up ready to go. If you shine your shoes, press your clothes, and show up with a good attitude, you have just beat out most of your competition. I know it sounds silly, but it is true. Show up ready to work, and you will set yourself up for success.
To Your Success.
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