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4 Keys to Sales Success

4 Keys to Sales Success

Sales

What’s the key to sales success? It’s learning from people smarter and more talented than you. Here’s what you need to learn:

1. Negotiation Strategies

At some point you will have a critical opportunity to close a deal -- or not. Your negotiating skills will help you get to a place where you can be satisfied and your prospects can be satisfied, too. How do you know what to offer and what to offer? You learn from other successful negotiators who find ways to reach an agreement.

Good negotiators know to always get something back when they give something away. They are able to demonstrate superior value for what they give up so in turn they get more in the negotiation.

2. Organization Strategies

Organized salespeople sell more -- and this does not mean having a neat desk. It’s about having a system to organize all the information available on your prospects and customers.

Information is key to sales success. CRM systems make it easier than ever to organize critical selling information about prospects and customers. Just make sure that the information you are collecting is the information that you need to serve your customers and target your prospects.

Being able to easily retrieve what you need, when you need it is a key to sales success. For example, I like to call up information about previous meetings like date, what occurred, action items agreed on, and dates to complete. That way the next sales call objective is easily created and acted on.

3. Communication Strategies

You need some basic communication strategies to learn to get past not only the gatekeeper, but the person who says, “I’m happy with my current supplier.” Simply asking successful sales professionals what they say and do will often give you new ideas to try. Asking about key concerns that customers have in specific industries is useful knowledge for developing your sales strategies; you're demonstrating your competence when you are able to identify the right customer concerns.

4. Presentation Strategies

If you're not sure how to present to a group or use visuals effectively, or if your sales presentations are a series of PowerPoint bullets, you need to ask to see a successful sales professional’s presentations. Knowing how, where, and when others present will also reveal if you’re presenting too soon or with an inadequate proposal.

Now that you know what to ask, be specific in what you ask for. A question like, “How do you sell?” will probably not get you a response that’s useful; the answer might just be, “Well, I just do it,” which is not very helpful. Asking specific questions to smart people will give you new ideas for selling. And you just might find that the keys to their success will also be the keys to yours.

Profile: Maura Schreier-Fleming

Maura Schreier-Fleming is president of Best@Selling, a sales training and sales consulting company. She works with business and sales professionals to increase sales and earn larger profits. She is the author of Real-World Selling for Out-of-this-World Results and Monday Morning Sales Tips. Maura focuses on sales strategies and tactics that lead to better sales results. Maura is a sales expert for WomenSalesPros. She is part of their group of top sales experts who inspire, educate, and develop salespeople and sales teams.She speaks internationally on influence, selling skills, and strategic selling at trade association and sales meetings, demonstrating how her principles can be applied to get results. She successfully worked for over 20 years in the male-dominated oil industry with two major corporations, beginning at Mobil Oil and ending at Chevron Corp. She was Mobil Oil’s first female lubrication engineer in the U.S. and was one of Chevron’s top five salespeople in the U.S. having sold over $9 million annually. Maura writes several columns to share her sales philosophies. She's been quoted in the New York Times, Selling Power, and Entrepreneur.