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Sales Essentials

This document discusses 8 habits of highly effective salespeople based on interviews with successful sales professionals. The 8 habits are: 1) Prepare well for meetings and presentations, 2) Qualify sales opportunities and prioritize time effectively, 3) Always follow up on conversations promptly, 4) Keep promises to customers, 5) Expand your network by asking for referrals, 6) Invest in continually updating your knowledge of products and services, 7) Train on listening and questioning skills, and 8) Maintain enthusiasm through getting enough sleep and having a positive attitude. Adopting these habits can help motivate salespeople without a "natural gift" for sales to improve their performance.

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Ankur Yewalekar
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155 views4 pages

Sales Essentials

This document discusses 8 habits of highly effective salespeople based on interviews with successful sales professionals. The 8 habits are: 1) Prepare well for meetings and presentations, 2) Qualify sales opportunities and prioritize time effectively, 3) Always follow up on conversations promptly, 4) Keep promises to customers, 5) Expand your network by asking for referrals, 6) Invest in continually updating your knowledge of products and services, 7) Train on listening and questioning skills, and 8) Maintain enthusiasm through getting enough sleep and having a positive attitude. Adopting these habits can help motivate salespeople without a "natural gift" for sales to improve their performance.

Uploaded by

Ankur Yewalekar
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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 What are the best sales habits

 What makes a great sales person?


 8 of the best sales habits (backed by data)

You probably know at least a handful of sales people that have that certain
“je ne sais quoi” about them.

These people are successful in sales because they have a great


personality, are natural born story tellers and seem to know all the secrets
to increasing revenue.

Any sales manager would give their teeth for someone like this in their
sales team, right?

On the other hand, there are also plenty of examples of sales people who
are successful at selling just through good, old –fashioned hard work and
effective habits.

What kind of habits are these, you ask?

Do all good sales people use these habits?

To find out the answers to these questions, we’ve reached out to some of
the most successful people within our own network who work in sales to
see if they could shed any light on the matter.

Our question was this:

“What do you think is the single most important


factor to being a successful sales person?”
The response has been fantastic, and we’re ready to share the results with
you.

We narrowed down all the answers to the following eight habits of highly
effective sales people.

8 Sales Habits You can Start Using Today


Let’s get started.

1. Prepare well – set aside time in your diary to prepare


“Proper planning prevents poor performance” is a saying that holds true in
many situations.
The sales managers we talked to mentioned that their top sales people
always prepared well for every big customer meeting. It wasn’t their skills
in `talking on the fly’ that made them succeed, it was the preparation.

Being prepared helped them to meet challenges or inspire customers to


think differently or in a new way. By being prepared, they could also
anticipate customer questions and be better able to meet their
expectations.

2. Qualify – be picky about which opportunities to spend time on


Good sales people have to be brutal about which sales opportunities they
spend their time on.

Wasting time on prospects who never reach a decision is worse than


losing to the competition. Top sales people are great at qualifying and
prioritizing which opportunities deserve attention. This is done by
constantly checking your sales pipeline and closely evaluating each
opportunity for a go or no-go.

3. Never forget – always register your conversations to ensure


you follow-up promptly
If a sales person forgets to follow-up on a conversation or a sales
meeting with you, it gives you the feeling that you are not important or
valued as a prospect or customer, right?

Of course, juggling a thousand things at one time means that even the
best of us can forget. To avoid this, top sales people explained that they
always register follow-ups in their diaries to ensure they remember what to
do next.

4. Keep your promises – check before you make a promise


Successful sales people keep their promises. Many deals have been
broken because sales people say what the customer wants to hear, rather
than to check the answer before promising something. Future B2B sales
are built on trust. It doesn’t help the relationship if you have to use time to
sort out situations that could have been avoided in the first place.

5. Expand your network – always ask for a new contact


Sales people can never have enough leads. How do you get around this?

We heard from sales people who focus on driving new business sales that
they never close a conversation without also asking for a new lead or
introduction to someone new. This, of course is networking 101, but a lot of
sales people are still afraid to ask for an introduction.
Asking for an introduction to someone else who could be interested in the
product or service is one of the most valuable sources of new business
leads for successful sales people.

6. Know your product – invest time in updating your knowledge


This may sound obvious, but knowing the products and services is a
distinguishing factor between those sales people who do well and those
who do great. Most customers will trust a sales person more when he can
demonstrate his knowledge about his products and services.

In order to do this, top sales people said that they spend the time to learn
and keep up- to- date on their company’s products and services.

In addition, they mentioned that they also broadened their knowledge on


related topics by subscribing to news, articles and following trends
regularly to be on top of their game.

7. Listen, listen, listen - train on your questioning and listening


skills
“A good sales person knows they have two ears and only one mouth” is an
often-used saying.

A sales person obviously needs to know how to present his products and
services, but a good sales person also knows when to stop talking
and knows how to listen.

One good habit to achieve these skills is to train at every opportunity given.
Some of the people we spoke to referred to attending training programs
given by their company, while others said that practicing listening and
questioning skills in their weekly sales team meetings and receiving
constructive feedback helped a lot.

The best sales people simply know that they are never done with training
and that listening and asking open-ended questions are at the heart of
understanding the customer. To think otherwise is one of the classic sales
mistakes.

8. Enthusiasm sells – get enough sleep and look on the bright


side of life
After having listened to the customer, it is important for sales people to
demonstrate their understanding and present how their products and
services meet the customers’ needs.

If this is done without enthusiasm, then it’s unlikely the customer will be
persuaded to invest, no matter how well the solution matched his
requirements.

So what habit helped towards keeping enthusiasm up?


Enough sleep wasn’t the answer we had expected, but we, indeed, got.

If you are tired, you are more likely to be grumpy and see problems rather
than opportunities. If you have slept well, you are more likely to take a
positive attitude and have more fun.

Conclusion
So there you have it – 8 habits of highly effective sales people.

Adopting one or all of these may not automatically turn you into a sales
hero, but perhaps they can inspire and motivate you to do something new
that works for you.

What do you think is the single most important factor to being a


successful sales person?

Free Sales Guide


As an added bonus to the 8 habits of highly effective sales people, we’re
giving you the 3 Powerful Sales Secrets to Sales Success.

Sales

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