6 essential skills every salesperson needs

It’s not enough to understand your product and market if you want to be a truly successful salesperson. You need to know about messaging and value propositions. And that’s just the start. It will take time to develop the skillset you want to have. But, to help you focus on the right things, ConvertMore talks about the essential skills every salesperson needs. Of course, there’s a lot of room for debate here. The answer will vary on the role, industry, and the buyers. However, some skills are always good to have. These will make it possible for you to be highly effective. You’ll close more sales, and your rank will rise. If that’s something you’re interested in, make sure to keep reading.

Empathy

When you’re working as a salesperson, one of the first things you should learn is how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. You want to be able to understand what’s troubling your clients. If you know how they’re feeling or what they’re thinking, you can guide the conversations where you want them to go.

In a way, you’ll get in their heads. When you uncover their motivations and pain points, you’ll have a better idea of when you can push and when to pause for a while. Little things like this make all the difference between an average sales rep and a rockstar.

And most importantly, you’ll build stronger relationships with your clients. You’ll make them feel a certain way, and they’ll remember it. You don’t want them to feel taken advantage of. If they know that you’re working in their best interest, they’ll trust you. And when you master this skill, your number of closed sales will depend only on the number of calls you get. So, if you pair up with ConvertMore lead engagement software, the sky becomes the limit.

Emotional intelligence

This skill connects right to the previous one. When you learn to understand how others feel, you need to learn how to manage both your and their emotions. You want your clients to relate to you. If you get there, they’ll follow your guidance, and that’s what you want.

To improve your emotional intelligence, there are four abilities to focus on.

• Perceiving emotions – knowing how to recognize emotions in faces, pictures, and voices, including yours. This is the most basic aspect, and you can’t go further without it.
• Using emotions – you want to use emotions to change your mood or the mood of the customer.
• Understanding emotions – not only do you need to understand relationships between emotions, but you also need to know how emotions evolve.
• Managing emotions – knowing how to regulate emotions in yourself and others.

As you can see, this is a valuable skill to have. And besides your career, it can be a lifesaver in your personal life as well. If you can pick up the prospect’s mood, you’ll know how to continue with the conversation. If they’re in a good mood, it may be the closing time. On the other hand, if they aren’t, you can ask them what’s wrong and listen to what they say to you. And that nicely brings us to the next point.

Active listening

Although it may not be your first guess, this is one of the essential skills every salesperson needs. As a matter of fact, every good sales rep knows that listening is more than half of your job. Talking people’s ears off until they buy from you won’t get you far in the long run. So, there’s no reason for you to do it.

Instead, work on improving your listening skills. Most people will tell you their pain points even without asking. The only thing you need to do is hear them out. This, of course, doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t ask any questions. You can use them to guide the conversation where you want it to go. However, be careful not to take over the conversation. You want to hear what they have to say and then offer a solution. Only this way, you’re staying on the customer’s side.

Confidence

This one shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. To be a great salesperson, you need to have confidence. And if you don’t feel like it at the moment, you can always fake it. That’s the beauty of it.

The thing is that if you’re confident, you’ll inspire confidence in others. So, if you’re stoked about what you’re selling, people will be stoked to buy it from you. It’s as simple as that. And the best thing about it is that it can help you in other parts of your business. For instance, if you want to boost web lead conversions, you need to make your forms sound brief, direct, and confident. You’ll be amazed by the results you’ll achieve by ensuring just these three things.

Flexibility

Now and then, the life of a salesperson becomes a whirlwind. Meetings will get postponed, and prospects will ask questions you’re not prepared to answer. And to deal with such things, you need to be flexible. You should be able to change plans in a second and do it constructively.

So, there’s no room for panic or frustration when an unexpected thing happens. You need to stay on top of your game. Take a few deep breaths, focus, and find alternative solutions. That’s how you get into the big league. On the other hand, it’s important to know when to say no. If you get overloaded, you won’t be of any use to anyone. Therefore, try to be flexible, but don’t push yourself too hard.

Optimism

If you’re at the beginning of your career, prepare for lots of unanswered emails, hung-up phone calls, and all kinds of rejections. Some people won’t be interested, and some won’t even qualify for your product. However, don’t let this get to you. If you become hung up on rejections, it can even impact your longevity. That’s something you want to avoid, and optimism helps. So, it’s clear why it is one of the essential skills every salesperson needs.