Article from Thinking Aloud

Are you one of the many businesswomen who think you are not in sales?

I hear that comment so often that I feel driven to comment…. If you are in business, you want and need to be a sales person. Not necessarily a full time sales professional, but you want to have the skills to be selling as needed…selling your ideas, your pet initiatives, and of course, selling your colleagues and managers on your own value to the organization.

So, for everyone who thinks that their sales skills are less than they could be (or, alternatively, that you have no potential for sales skills at all), here are some quick pointers to lead you to more effective selling.

Don’t pitch, converse.
Spend 5x more in prepping your sales call than in delivering it.
Focus on what your audience cares about, not on what’s in it for you.
Sell the benefits, back it up with the features. Don’t lead with factoids, but with why they matter.
Closing is not for the end of a call, keep getting agreement throughout the conversation.

Ok, obviously, it’ll take a bit more than a list of bullet points, so let's dig a little deeper.

The most effective sales people are those who have done their homework to understand the needs, concerns and interests of the people they are selling to. And they synthesize that pre-call homework into their plans for points to cover, to make sure every selling point is couched in a larger point known (or at least suspected) to be of interest to the audience.

They bring that planning to the sales conversation, and then, knowing that they have tons of smart things to say, resist the urge to say it all, choosing instead to engage the prospect in a conversation. And it’s a two-way conversation, listening more than speaking, allowing the seller to gage, at every step of the call, whether they are getting buy-in on their ideas, whether the points are getting agreement, whether you are moving closer to or further away from a closing point.

Getting a different picture than your yucky fast-talking sales stereotype? I hope so, because the sooner you vanquish that picture from your mind, the sooner you’ll find your own comfortable sales voice, your own most natural style for selling yourself and your ideas.

I’ve mentioned that great salespeople focus on the buyer’s point of view, rather than their own. You may be wondering how that is possible when you don’t know the buyer well enough to know what they think. The answer comes back to your preparation before the call, researching not just the company but the individual you’ll be talking to.

And then, don’t assume your research tells the whole story. Instead, use your conversation to verify your assumptions. Keep checking in, with questions that tell you how close you are to on target. “It seems to me, from my research, that your firm is facing some stiff competition from XYZ Corp., and I wonder if that’s a big area of concern for you?” Then sit back and let them answer. Be quiet long enough to encourage a full response, and you’ll learn a ton about the competitive situation and what they do or do not worry about. When we keep talking, making assumptions without taking a pulse, we lose our chance to learn what the prospective buyer really thinks.

OK, I’ve tried to synthesize and summarize the highlights of intro to salesmanship in one short article, and I know full well that the concept can’t be well covered in this space. So, I throw it back to you…. Do you want to know more about selling skills? Are there particular aspects of selling you wonder about? If so, let Lauren Calkins, Thinking Aloud’s editor know at laurenc@worldwit.org and we’ll add a regular selling column in this space.

Janet Ryan is a 27+ year sales professional and a strategic sales consultant with expertise in consultative and conversational selling. She has sold millions of dollars worth of corporate contracts, run multimillion dollar profit centers, and trained thousands of sales people to more effectively meet their sales and professional development goals.