Basics Of Sales

21 Aug Basics Of Sales

Hi, everyone. My name is Tshepo. I’m from a company called BWD Advertising based in North Riding, Johannesburg, South Africa. I’m in the sales department and business development. So today we’re going to speak about sales and the roots of sales.

Skills Needed for Sales

Now, what are the skills needed for sales? The skills needed for sales mainly are communication, which is the key to any salesperson and any sales pitch. Your communication skills need to be right up there so that your client and the person you’re pitching to understands what you are selling and then your skills will also get you over the line. Now sales are the lifeblood of any organization. Every organization needs a great sales team, a team that will wow the client, a team that will sell your organization, therefore, increasing growth of the organization and essentially paying the bills.

Now, what skills do you need to be a successful salesperson? Well, for me the most important skill has to be communication. You have to be able to communicate clearly to your client and to your target market.

Listening Skills

Secondly, I would say your listening skills. Your listening skills need to be very attentive, you need to be attentive to the client, you need to listen to what the client is saying so that you don’t get it wrong and by listening to the client, you will get to the crux of what the client needs.

Understanding the clients needs

As well, understanding. You need to understand what your client wants. It’s no use selling something when you don’t understand what the client’s needs are. You need to understand the client’s needs and the psychological part.

Psychology

The psychological part is understanding what’s in your client’s mind, your customer’s mind, what they are thinking at that time and what they need at that time and that’s part of that understanding. And then your subject matter.

Subject Matter

You need to be an expert in whatever subject matter that you are selling. Whether it be a service you’re selling, you need to know exactly what you’re talking about. Whether it be a product you’re selling, you need to know what that product is about, so you need to be an expert in whatever you’re selling.

Steps of Selling

Steps of selling. What are the steps for selling? I would say firstly, preparation. You need to know what you’re doing.

Firstly, you need to prepare so that when you walk in and you’re selling a service or you’re selling a product, that potential client or customer knows exactly what you’re selling and knows what you’re doing. So preparation is key or else without preparation you’re preparing to fail.

Approach

And then your approach. Are you aggressive, are you intermediate or are you soft? The way you approach a client needs to be tailored to that specific client or customer. Your presentation, you need to have a proper presentation, neat and attention-grabbing so that that person you’re pitching to or the client or the customer you’re pitching to gets the idea and sees that there is an effort put into whatever you’re pitching.

Closing

And then closing. Closing you need to be… You know, every sales lead, most of them need to lead to closing, so you need to make sure that your closing percentage is quite good. Normally you wanna aim for around at least half if you can. And then lastly, your follow-ups. Once you’ve closed that client, your follow-ups are the key in anything because the client then knows that you are interested in what they’re doing and that you’re not just taking their money, but you are actually delivering and actually going above the means of duty.