If you want to be ready to sell anything to anyone you had better have excellent Preparation Skills.
Like a Boy Scout, you always need to be prepared.
The sign of a good salesperson is their level of preparedness. They appear confident because they’ve done their homework.
As selling skills go, your Preparation Skills will get better over time and help you overcome any objections raised in a sales call.
Sometimes salespeople exhibit an uneasy feeling when they go into a sales call. It’s usually due, in large part, to the fact they aren’t ready to talk to anyone about the products and/or services they are selling. They haven’t taken the necessary steps to be ready.
It’s easy to blame Sales Managers for this situation but if you want to make money, get yourself ready to do battle and find a way to get the knowledge you need. So what kind of homework should you do?
Knowledge Base
Build a Knowledge Base that you can refer-to and add-to over time. You should collect essential information about your products and/or services which you will use to your advantage.
Find out who uses your products and/or services. The more concise this package is, the better prepared you will be. Here are a few items you should build for your Knowledge Base:
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Product Knowledge
- Features and Benefits
- Purpose
- Differentiate
- Competitive Advantage
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Overcoming Objections
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Customer Profile
- Demographics
- Organization Chart
- Testimonials
They say information is power and knowing your product is essential to your success.
Learn everything you can about your product or service. The most successful salesperson is usually the go-to-person when someone has a question. You BE that person.
What problems does your product solve?
What makes your product special?
What makes your product better than other similar products in the market?
Find out what customers common objections are and then collect and understand the answers to the objections. Develop a list of Frequently Asked Questions and the Answers.
It is important to know who buys your products and/or services and why. The more information you have about the buyer, the easier it will be to identify a Prospective Client.
The buyers of your products will all have common traits and will fall into identifiable categories. Know what they are and collect any information you can find.
If you sell into businesses, find out how the organization is structured, where the decision to buy is made, and who makes it.
Know what clients say about your company, it’s products, services, and you. Collect this information and put it into a presentable format that can be shown to your prospective client.
As a Professional Sales Person, you should build a Knowledge Base that will serve you well. Collect documents and information and put it where you have quick and easy access. Maybe a special binder or accordian folder will serve the purpose. Whatever way you decide make sure it provides you with the tools you will need.
These Preparation Skills will help you be a better Salesperson.
Jim
Telesales-pro.com is primarily concerned with B2B Telesales. Selling over the Phone to business is a highly specialized activity and depends on many Sales Techniques specific to Telesales.
Whether you are looking for Sales Jobs or Sales Leads, TeleSales-Pro exists to provide you with valuable Sales Tips and Resources.
If you are trying to build your Sales Skills, improving your Telephone Sales Skills will give you a great foundation in Sales. After all, as salespeople, we all want to be Selling more.
Learning to Sell over the Phone will help you understand the Sales Process and will enable you to improve your overall Sales Negotiation Skills.
If you have any comments, feel free to comment about anything you read on telesales-pro.com. If you want to contact me you can email me: jim@telesales-pro.com
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