In this post i'll be moving away a bit from marketing and planning strategies and focus a bit on Sales. In some companies the highest paid staff member is the sales manager...why? Because they are the ones responsible for devising strategies to make the company a profit...note I didn't say money, I said a PROFIT.
The question is, what makes some people so successful at sales and not others. I think it has to do with them having some of the same attributes I listed in my last post on "successful People". Speaking with a good sales manager friend of mine who works in a leading mobile telecommunication company, I asked her what makes her stand out, Her response: A solid plan and consistent follow-up coupled with a friendly but confident attitude. Her motto: "winners make things happen, losers let things happen". She certainly lives up to that, i've seen her in action and she is smooth. Pushy without making the potential buyer feel pushed around.
So what is it? A born trait? Is it personality? looks? sex appeal? intelligence? above average knowledge of the product? Or is it pushing leads and following up? In my opinion it's all. A combination of personal attributes and Strategy. It also depends on what you are selling of course. To sell an encyclopedia you would certainly have to use a different approach than say someone selling beauty products. BUT....would the approaches have anything in common? well that's what I have been trying to determine. This is what I've come up with:
Personal Attributes:The approach persons take to pitch a sale can be completely and utterly different , but the personal attributes that makes a winning sales person would more of less be the same. Below i've listed some of what are considered the most popular personel attributes :
1) You must be self-motivated or able to motivate a team without alienating them
2) You must not only want or speak of success, you must NEED it
3) You must set a series of realistically high goals and establish a timetable for meeting them
4) You must act as if it's impossible for you not to be a consistently high acheiver.
5) You must form the habit of doing things the correct way the first time (remember money and time is involved here, more than likely not yours!)
6)Always be prepared for surprises (try to predetermine what these could be)
7) Aways, Always take the potential buyer's needs and budget into consideration
8) Give the impression of Confidence and Success (dress for success)
9) Guard moral values
10) Weed out real opportunities from "talkers" by asking the right questions
11) Practice ways of dealing with different personalities and interests and turning them into sales
12) Be Prepared: Check, double check and triple check your presentations and always prepare more than more kinds with extra copies in different formats.
13) Keep abreast with changing technology which can impact sales strategy and help to cultivate pre-sales leads.
I will stop at 13 but can add lots more. I think these are the major ones which can be elaborated on to include more. I will try to touch on most of these as time goes by.
Sales Strategy:
Apart from having the correct attitude and attributes a good sales person will always have a great strategy. Most people use the sales funnel as a base for their sales strats. I will discuss this in a subsequent post, be sure to check it out!
