Train Your Salespeople in These 9 Sales Skills

What makes successful salespeople isn’t just inherent abilities. It’s also their skill sets. Your sales training should be focused on making sure that your team is equipped with the right sales skills, which should include:

1. Process. Your sales process and methodology represents how you best approach your market, and everyone on your team should be lined up to follow and support the process.
2. Prospecting. Successful salespeople know how to prospect, how to qualify and disqualify, and how to move qualified prospects into the pipeline.
3. Rapport building. While some salespeople seem naturally “likable,” the process of building rapport and maintaining trust is a skill you can–and should–train.
4. Communication styles. Salespeople who understand different communication styles can be more effective in working with buyers of all types.
5. Pre-call planning. Salespeople who plan their calls effectively will be more successful.
6. Consultative selling. Successful salespeople possess business acumen and consultative skills that enable them to help prospects identify and solve problems.
7. Probing questions. Successful salespeople know how to ask deep, probing questions that help prospects understand their problems and reveal the information that will help your salespeople to help them solve those problems.
8. Clear positioning. Your salespeople should clearly understand your positioning, and how to communicate it to prospects effectively.
9. Value differentiation. Successful salespeople communicate value differentiation to prospects in order to create pricing advantages.

Training should be customized for your particular sales environment and the needs of your salespeople. Partner with a sales training organization that demonstrates a proven track record of delivering substantial returns on training investments, and that combines the latest in learning and development, with sales best practices, and with your unique approach to selling.