Category: Articles on Sales techniques

Are you embarking on a sales career? Congratulation. It can be very fulfilling to solve your customer’s problems as a career.

Are you a seasoned sales rep but recently recruited by another company? However, you feel that you are stuck on 2nd gear.

Whatever your situation is, are you thinking, how to become awesome at this job? Surely, this often goes through your mind, right?

Whenever you start a new job, you often meet it with enthusiasm and curiosity. There is a high level of expectation, both yours and your sales manager.

The purpose of this blog is to highlight the things you should think about if you are keen to exceed your sales manager’s expectation in your role.

Secondly, nothing is more satisfying than your awareness of how well you are progressing in your new role and the understanding of what it takes to be successful.

I hope this clears your vision and lay the foundation for a successful sales career.

Rejection is the greatest fear of selling. But does it deserves the attention in our minds long enough to upset us?

The fear of rejection is enough to stop people from even wanting to do this job.

The negative perception of selling is very well justified. Aggressive sales reps push their products and services too often. Also, there is a notion of sales reps being manipulative just to make a buck. 

It is a big problem if this is the image we paint in our minds. We do not last long in this job if we think that our ethic is going to be challenged constantly. The moment things get a bit harder, we justify that we are not going to even try to do better.

We are wary of the constant rejection when we engage with our prospects. The question is how do we keep going?

The emotional impact if left unchecked, often lead to a budding sales recruit to feel crap and then eventually quit. It is not a role for them is often their conclusion.

Pitching has become an epidemic to attract customers to buy.

People are spending more time perfecting their pitch instead of improving their sales skill to ask questions and listen. This is daunting for me.

“Elevator pitch” and “cold call pitch” concepts are created to feed into this frenzy.

There are television shows that emphasize this with the reward of investors bidding furiously based on that 60 secs pitch. It makes good TV. However, it is more important to understand what happens after the excitement has worn off behind closed doors.

This blog describes the misunderstanding of what pitching is and how we can avoid the trap when selling to our customers.

Please note, pitching is required in any sales call. Our focus here is knowing when and how to use it effectively and efficiently.

Is selling a form of manipulation?

The negative perception of selling is deafening. It is scary to know that the general public thinks that this is what sales reps normally do.

Contrary to popular belief, selling is about integrity. We persuade our customers by first understand their needs and issues and provide the right solution to solve them.

More sales reps do the right thing than those who are not. However, what gets attention are those who do not.

I could not care less about the budget, KPI or any other business pressures when it comes to integrity. If there is an expectation by a business to manipulate our customers to exceed any of that, it is time to quit immediately.

There is a reason why the general public detests sales reps and selling.

The Wikipedia definition of manipulation is “the action of manipulating someone in a clever or unscrupulous way.” There is a negative association of this word in the world of selling that never sits comfortably with me.

The definition of selling to me is “the exchange of something for another thing that is mutually beneficial to both parties that they value”. Therefore, there is no reason for manipulation to ever exist in sales.

The purpose of this newsletter is to prove that there is no room for manipulation when we sell.

Do you ask more questions or make more statements in your sales call? Which one helps your customer share their needs and issues more do you think?

Whenever you are engaging with a customer for the first time, what do you do during the early part of the sales call? Especially when it is face to face.

Everyone has different selling styles. So much so that there are books to segment the different types. I am not sure the value of doing that. 

At the end of the day, there is an over-riding selling principle. If you do not know your customer’s needs or issues at the end of a sales call, you will fail more than you can imagine.

Hollywood would never show this side of sales because it is boring for the viewers. It is more entertaining to watch a gun sales rep closed an unwary customer which would result in a massive purchase right there and then. It is more heroic to watch and also, who would sit there and watch a movie with sales to close in 4 years? There is no entertainment value for me here either, to be honest.

We are human. It is normal to prefer to talk than to listen. However, it is not all bad. Voice can come out of your mouth during a sales call. More importantly, is it a question or a statement?

Do you truly practice active listening?

You think you know what active listening is. But can you apply it in your sales call?

I have spent a lot of effort in my articles emphasizing the need to practice active listening in sales. When I ask others to define this, most get only half right. The most common answer is “listen intently”.

Wikipedia defines active listening as “a technique that is used in counseling, training, and solving disputes or conflicts. It requires that the listener fully concentrate, understand, respond and then remember what is being said.”

In my search, it was interesting to see there are other listening methods such as “reflective listening” and empathetic listening.

However you define the type of listening methods, there is a need for action on the listener’s side to engage with their customers better.

Let’s go back to active listening. Please note the last bit of the definition: “fully concentrate, understand, respond”. What does that tell you?

Active listening is a lot more involved than just listening especially in sales.

Let’s get technical.

The sales lessons I learned in my career are so invaluable that I am grateful for them every day. It is not always rosy as you would expect. You would hope that there is more joy than pain as you embark in this career.

I iterated several times in my previous blogs that sales can be a difficult and emotional game.

However, once you have established a strong foundation and consistently grind forward, sales can also be a very fulfilling and productive career.

It is so important to regularly reflect on the sales lessons we have learned so that we can actively improve ourselves.

In this blog, I hope to bring awareness to those who are interested in embarking on this path. The objective is to highlight the lessons I learned in my sales career.

Ambivert. Did you know that this word even exists? It is possibly the most underrated word in sales.

I have never even heard of the word until recently and it makes so much more sense to describe who I am in the world of selling.

Throughout my sale management career, the one thing that often concerns me is when a sales rep would tell me “This is my selling style and I am not willing to change because it works.” It is very disappointing when I hear this. This is why I would like to discuss the danger of sticking to only one selling style.

Are you present during your sales call? Physically, you may be at a sales call but are you mentally there at the same time? Are you really awake?