According to reports from popular job boards, employers were most likely to be looking for sales managers in 2021. This comes as no surprise. A good sales manager is a superhero who can connect with potential customers and close deals in a week, or even faster.
Look at the Internet: in the list of recommended books for business owners you are sure to find the bestsellers on how to sell better, in YouTube videos, you will come across the “most effective methods” and “most fail-safe techniques” for sales. What to say about the increasingly infinite number of articles, webinars, and courses on sales.
But sales – it’s not only about techniques and equipment. Sales are also about skills. The good news is that all of these skills can be developed with sales training courses in India.
Skills needed to build a career in sales
In a professional environment, all skills are divided into two types:
- Hard skills include specific, professional skills that can be acquired through training and demonstration. These include knowledge of foreign or programming languages, the ability to work with a specific program, or the ability to type blindly;
- Soft skills are a set of career-critical skills that are not directly related to a specific subject area but affect efficiency and high performance. Soft skills include the ability to work in a team, the ability to establish a dialogue, build long-term relationships with customers, adapt to change, and solve several tasks simultaneously.
Let’s elaborate on the soft skills that a sales professional needs.
Empathy
Empathy is the ability not only to listen but also to hear the interlocutor – a must-have skill for the salesman. When you understand that in one case you need to push to close the deal, and in another – to release the pressure, you turn from an ordinary salesman into a superstar.
Emotional intelligence
Developed emotional intelligence helps you better understand and manage emotions. This is an incredibly valuable skill that contributes to success in both your career, personal life, and sales.
Focus of Attention
Being able to highlight what is most important and focus on it despite distractions is an incredibly useful skill without which it is very difficult to get results. You can’t have two birds with one stone.
Flexibility
Another important skill that comes in handy in both life and sales is adaptability. A salesman has to communicate with a huge number of people, all of whom have their character, their views of the world. Without the ability to adapt quickly to the situation it will not be possible to establish contact with a difficult client and to offer suitable variants of solving the problem.
Creativity
Communication with clients can be unpredictable. A creative outlook on things helps to look at the situation in a new way, offer a non-trivial solution, to stand out from the competition.
Word-of-mouth skills
61% of sales professionals admit that it’s harder to sell now than it was 5 years ago. Consumers have access to information and in general, have become more demanding – they do not need empty promises, they value facts and evidence.
Being able to articulate your thoughts clearly and concisely, talk simply about the complexities, and back up your words with facts is another important skill that you can’t close a deal without.
Of course, no one denies the importance of professional skills, but with the development of soft skills – your work and career advancement will go better and faster. In addition, if you decide to change the vector of activity, these skills will be useful in any direction. So don’t forget to invest in yourself and your skills.
