How can I improve my sales skills?

Article by a guest expert: Quentin Despas, MYM Sales Coach

Do you know how to achieve better sales results and exceed your targets?

Since Modjo insisted that I tell you, I'm going to give you my biggest secret for getting ahead in B2B sales and increasing your turnover. If you do what I'm about to tell you, I can assure you that you'll become a better salesman.

Becoming better and surpassing your objectives - that's what every salesperson wants, isn't it?

Pay close attention to what follows and to the rest of this article, because more than the solution, it's the methods and your ability to apply them in the field that will influence your future success. The suspense having become unbearable, I must now reveal the secret: to progress, you must train, repeat, sometimes fail, but train again and again. Disappointed?

Were you expecting a grandmother's recipe? A magic formula that, if correctly repeated to the prospect, would provoke a sudden urge to buy (if you have it, I don't mind you sharing it with me)? I'm sorry, but that's the best answer I can offer. Having tried many, I can assure you that this is the best solution to improve your results. Everyone knows this. To progress, you have to practice, repeat, sometimes fail, but always and always practice. It's the only secret to apply

However, while the concept is obvious to everyone when it comes to sporting performance, it is sometimes difficult to assimilate when it comes to sales performance. I'm talking, of course, about the results of business developers, account managers, account executives - in short, salespeople! (Let's call a spade a spade, there's nothing pejorative about that word. Meow!). While it's easy to understand the importance of training and practice when you're a salesperson, in the field we see that these "proofs" are in fact very rarely put into practice. And sales reps go from meeting to meeting, never really training each other to progress.

This is precisely where we need to make progress. It's essential to know how to implement strategies that "get it right". It's an easy comparison: imagine an athlete who goes from competition to competition without training in between, hoping to achieve better results each time. It's absurd! If in sport, we've never seen an athlete win a race without training, why should the best salespeople escape the rule? And yet, in many companies, we still see salespeople training very little (if at all).

What's the point? What needs to be done? How can we train sales people to progress?

If we use the metaphor of athletes, we realize that they have infrastructures, exercises and trainers that make the notion of training clear and concrete. Salespeople rarely do. If you look at the traditional "job description" of a salesperson, you'll clearly see that his or her job is to win business, to "generate sales", but few companies indicate: "Ongoing training", "weekly training", "perfect your communication", "become more competent in our customers' business"...

In other words, we ask our beloved athletes to win races, but we don't ask them to train for it. When they do, how do they go about it? What infrastructure is available for their training? Questions that often go unanswered.

On closer inspection, the only opportunities salespeople have to train are on real cases, on offers. High stakes, stressful moments, where mistakes mean lost business for the company. Pity.

In practical terms, how do you structure sales training?

Here are 6 keys to help you:

1. A calendar
2. Themes
3. Exercises
4. A way to measure progress
5. Reviews
6. A real bargain.
   

1. A calendar

What training slots do your sales reps have in their diaries? What is their training hygiene and progress? How much time do they devote to improving their skills each week?

As you can see, the first step to progress is to make this part of salespeople's daily lives. They need to understand that training is part of their job and their responsibilities.

It's in the famous "job description" (if you don't have one, think about it), it's a subject discussed at meetings between the salesperson and his/her manager, it's discussed at sales meetings...

In short, training, coaching and skills enhancement in general need to be fully embedded in the team's habits, to make them a reflex, or rather a mission. It's part of their job as salespeople.

2. Themes

It's all very well to want to make progress, but on what? What's possible? Where do you start? Are you clear about the skills you need to develop to become an excellent salesperson?

Here are a few examples to give you some ideas:

• The sales meeting,
• The salesperson's presentation during an appointment,
• Read the psychological profiles of your prospects,
• The salesperson's communication skills and flexibility,
• Knowledge of the customer's business,
• Product knowledge,
• Knowledge of use cases,
• Market and industry knowledge,
• Competitor knowledge,
• Navigating large accounts,
• Drafting proposals,
• Needs analysis,
• The terrain,
• The demo,
• Prospecting e-mails,
• prospecting calls,
• Appointment presentations,
• The conclusions...

The above examples are not exhaustive, and you can develop themes specific to your business sector. Nevertheless, some topics are essential, cross-cutting to any type of sales and any type of company. (for example, knowledge of the company, the customer, the product, the industry or the competition).

It's a shame, when you consider that trust is a determining factor in sales, and that prospects find it hard to trust someone who's "not in the business" or who hasn't made the effort to understand it and take an in-depth interest. In short, someone who isn't always relevant.

Putting skills into words not only raises awareness of the need to practice, but also helps to organize one's own skills development.

We draw up a map of the territories to be explored. You can see at a glance where you need to go. This defines a goal and makes the progress you can make tangible.

Create your own list of ideal salesperson skills!

3. Exercises

Now that I understand that I need to work on my "needs analysis", or "personal presentation", and I've spent some time doing so, how do I go about it? How can I improve in this area?

If you don't offer your sales people concrete exercises, they'll know they need to improve, but they won't know how to go about it. Frustrating! At best, they'll practice on their own, but this creates unnecessary barriers to entry and friction points during training. You want to do the opposite!

Some examples of exercises :

• The presentation: record them presenting themselves in one minute according to a precise script. Provide tips and areas for improvement, then repeat until you have a convincing version.
  Once this is done, ask your team members to do it again a week later to give each other feedback, but above all, to "repeat" the right gestures.

• The objection list: ask your sales reps to go through a list of questions frequently asked by prospects. The ideal answers to each one should be known by heart. Here again, you can run regular simulations to keep the team up to date.

• Key points: what are the 5 biggest problems for each of our employees? Do you have any customer use cases to illustrate them?

To ensure that these exercises really benefit your teams, try to use real cases that they may have encountered in customer meetings. Sales analysis is essential for understanding and targeting the areas you need to work on with your team. The more material you have, the more relevant and effective exercises you can create.

When it comes to exercises, the only limit is your imagination. You need to create exercises that are fun, gripping, useful and ready to use for salespeople. Otherwise, they won't want to do the exercise, and you risk a fiasco! Create one or two to start with and see how they react. You'll be able to adapt (and involve them in the creation later).

4. A way to measure progress.

How can you set up a way to track your progress and that of the team? Before and after videos? MCQ scores? Evaluation criteria? Are a certain number of criteria met during a simulation?

You need to track every workout, every performance, so that you can compare them with previous and subsequent ones. This way, you'll have the material to determine the progression of the ads.

Salespeople themselves need to "see" themselves progressing, it's more motivating and seeing the result encourages them to continue the training process. A simple way to do this is to record your calls and play them back to track your progress. You can also ask your colleagues to accompany you by offering to listen to your calls again and give you their feedback afterwards.

Of course, the best measurement tool is the alternating current generated.

5. Tests

From time to time, organize practice sessions that cover all the salespeople's skills (at random) to see where everyone stands and get an overall assessment. This also helps to recreate a stressful moment, a big oral. It's similar to what you'd experience in a meeting, but without the stakes involved (risk of sale/non-sale).

These tests push salespeople to be ready and create the "quiz" effect, which is good to use from time to time to REALLY know where you and your salespeople stand.

‍

6. Large-scale validation

All this only makes sense for real sales. So it's time to get out in the field, in front of the customers, to finish the job and appreciate the results.

Good salespeople don't sell every time, but if they don't, they know why and don't regret the way they handled the relationship.

He knows that he has respected the fundamentals because he knows what they are (knowledge) and how to apply them (skill).

In the field, salespeople need to focus on applying what they've been trained to do, meeting after meeting.

The best way to do this is to choose, before the meeting, the part on which you're going to focus your attention. What's more, an outside eye will be useful for his progress. Don't hesitate to organize two-person meetings where one of the two salespeople will be in charge of observing the situation, taking notes and giving constructive, sympathetic feedback to the other.

It's by transforming in the field what has been done in training that we create the result. So take the plunge... but only after you've done it many times, in a safe environment where mistakes have no impact on results, are you ready and confident to do the same on the big day.

Conclusion

You've got the keys to setting up an effective training program for your team and ensuring that they make commercial progress. Make sure you know what you expect of your team (or of yourself if you're a salesperson), what you need to master to get the "right" level. Set the standards, rules and methods for each of your topics, and offer your sales people a concrete, practical and fun way of putting them into practice, because "knowing" (training) is fine, but it's useless in sales. You need "know-how" (training/simulation), but above all "doing" (application with customers) to create results and significantly increase your sales.

‍

It's up to you