8 x Professional Sales Skills You Need To Master
Professional sales skills are a must learn if you want to be reach the top 5% of your chosen industry in selling.
By professional sales skills – we mean skills that’ll position you as an authority and separate you from the competition.
It’s not always easy; you get so busy doing your day to day tasks such as prospecting, meeting with potential clients and trying to get referrals, that you may forget to up-skill your personal and sales development.
In this article, we’ll look at making it easier for you by sharing the top 8 x professional sales skills you need to master if you want to take your sales skills – and income to the next level.
8 x Professional Sales Skills You Need To Master
#1 On Your Professional Sales Skills List: Know Your Product
The first important step when enhancing your professional sales skills, is to learn about your product in detail, and how it helps your potential clients.
We teach our students that it isn’t about your product or service at all – but instead, it is about how it’ll help solve their problems, alleviate pain, and get them positive results and outcomes.
People don’t buy products or services; they buy what it will mean when they own it.
What happens when people buy your product or service?
Identify what pain your potential clients have with their business, and what are the various ways in which your product or service offers them solutions.
Do you know what kind of outcomes they’re looking for? How does your product or service bridge the gap from where they’re at, to where they want to be?
Finally – it’s important to know the technical aspects about what you sell, so you can learn how to effectively bridge the gap when it’s time to present your product or service.
Related article: Why People Buy
#2 On Your Professional Sales Skills List: Pre-Framing
The next important step on your professional sales skills list of things to know, is learning how to properly do a pre-frame.
When you engage in a deep dive conversation with your potential client, you’ll be entering something we call a frame. You’ll be framing how your product or service will give them what they need.
Prior to entering the frame, it’s important to do something called a pre-frame.
A pre-frame is the step by step process you set before entering the detailed conversation, to ensure that you and your potential client can get a positive outcome.
A positive outcome means:
- Your potential client knows that you’ll be asking lots of questions
- You have the right decision makers present
- At the end of the conversation they’ll buy if they’re interested, or there will be a next step
- If they’re not interested – they can let you know; this way, you don’t walk away hoping that they’ll buy later when they in fact won’t
A pre-frame is powerful, because not only does it set you up as a specialist, but it overcomes a lot of the potential objections that may come up later.
To learn how to do this in more detail, check out the related article below.
Related article: How To Overcome The Two Main Sales Objections In Two Minutes
#3 On Your Professional Sales Skills List: Prospecting
A very critical professional sales skill is learning sales prospecting; or how to make potential clients aware of your product or service, and then meeting or speaking with them to buy in some shape or form.
Generally, there are two main types of prospecting types.
- Inbound prospecting
- Outbound prospecting
Inbound prospecting is the step by step system you set up for leads to contact you if they’re interested in your product or service.
Outbound prospecting is the step by step process of setting up a system to reach out to your desired audience.
Depending on your business type, you may use inbound, outbound, or maybe even both.
To learn how to do each of these activities in more detail, read the related article below.
Related article: The Two Types Of Sales Prospecting methods For More Sales
#4 – A Consistent Sales Process
The most important of the professional sales skills you could learn, execute and master – would have to be following a proven and consistent sales process.
So many sales professionals lose sales, because they either don’t know how to follow a sales process, or they drift from using it systematically.
Also know as a sales methodology; a sales process is a step by step structure sales professionals use to guide them towards the sale.
Although there are many sales process types, the one we teach is very much question based.
The reason being, is the more questions you ask, the more your potential client will open up about what it is in fact they want and need; and the more you can gently lead them towards selling themselves.
It’s easier to help someone sell themselves, rather than trying to use hard and heavy sales tactics.
Our sales process The 5% Sales Blueprint, consists of the following steps:
- Building rapport
- Pre-framing
- Finding pain
- Learning their desires
- Talking about money
- Presenting
- Handling objections
- Asking for the sale
To learn more about how you can implement each of these steps in more detail, read the related article below.
Related article: The Sales Process – A Step By Step Guide
#5 – Asking Powerful Questions
Asking the right questions during the right stage of the sales process, is a very important toolkit to learn in your list of professional sales skills.
Questions show empathy, give you information about decision makers, and help you learn what issues they’re trying to overcome, and what they want to achieve.
The difference between amateur sales people and sales professionals, is amateurs make a lot of statements; where sales professionals ask excellent questions instead.
There are various question types we recommend you learn, master and use regularly.
These are:
We also recommend learning various types of sales probing questions, such as how they buy, finding pain, and handling objections.
#6 – Qualifying
You would be surprised to learn how many sales people waste time talking to people who don’t qualify for their offer; either they don’t have the money, or they’re not a decision maker in the buying process.
By wasting time presenting to people who aren’t qualified, you potentially lose time, money, and potential resources you could have used elsewhere.
Qualifying is a crucial professional sales skill, and one we highly recommend you do for each of your sales conversations.
A common qualifying acronym many professional sales people use, is BANT.
- Budget
- Authority
- Need
- Timeframe
To learn more about how you can use BANT, check out the related article below.
Related article: BANT In Sales – How Does It Work?
#7 On Your Professional Sales Skills List: Handling Objections
You may have your conversational and rapport skills down pat; but if you don’t know how to handle objections, you’ll continue to struggle with closing more sales.
Overcoming objections should be one of your priority professional sales skills to learn, because when done correctly; it can help you gently guide the potential client to handle it in a consultative way.
Instead of using out-dated sales scripts, we’ve created a simple to use, five step frame work to help you handle objections with ease. Click here to learn how.
#8 On Your Professional Sales Skills List: Presenting Correctly
Many sales people present incorrectly; and this ends up costing them the sale.
As per our article here in Entrepreneur Magazine, many sales people do something we call premature presentation; where they present first and ask questions later.
Not only does this cost you more sales, but it positions you as a commodity, rather than a specialist or authority in your chosen field.
Presenting correctly is an excellent and must know professional sales skill, and one we highly recommend you learn. Check out the article below to learn how to effectively present your product or service.
Related article: 10 x Effective Sales Presentation Tips You Need To Use
Final Thoughts
Professional sales skills are crucial to learn, master and execute if you wish to take your sales to the next level.
It can literally be the difference between living in mediocrity or opening a completely new world of income and abundance.
If you want to learn how you can take your sales skills to the next level, you can register for a 7 day sales challenge here.
Want To Close Sales Easier?
Are you committed to closing sales a lot easier, and consistently?
If so, you should check out our self-paced and affordable online sales training program; The 5% Sales Blueprint.
It’ll give you everything you need to close sales consistently.
To learn more, simply click on the link below for more information.
Our Online Sales Training Program – The 5% Sales Blueprint.
