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Top 7 Sales Skills to Increase Sales in 2009 Regardless of the Economy

Written by: Leanne Hoagland-Smith

Article Overview: Being a top sales producer extends beyond your technical sales skills into your personal or self leadership skills. You must have knowledge of the results from your marketing and selling actions along with incredible self leadership skills. These seven sales skills can potentially deliver far more results than any technical selling skill such as fact finding to closing.

Top 7 Sales Skills to Increase Sales in 2009 Regardless of the Economy

Being a top sales producer extends beyond your technical sales skills into your personal or self leadership skills. You must have knowledge of the results from your marketing and selling actions along with incredible self leadership skills. These seven sales skills can potentially deliver far more results than any technical selling skill such as fact finding to closing.

Number One Sales Skill: Track Your Progress
Right now, do you know where you stand specific to:

Leads in your marketing funnel?
Follow ups on those leads?
Statements of work a.k.a. proposals?
Orders in your sales funnel?
Delivery of orders?
Follow ups after each completed earned sale?
Referrals?

Number Two Sales Skill: Know all of your sales numbers
Do you know all the numbers respective to your sales actions? These numbers may include and are not limited to:

Sales to earn ratio a.k.a. sales to close ratio
Sales cycle time
Average dollar value per sale

Number Three Sales Skill: Increase your current actions by 10%
What would happen if you increase your current actions by just 10%? The simple action of increasing your daily focused activity might look like this:

Instead of making 10 calls per day, you may 11.
Instead of setting 10 appointments every two weeks, you set 11
Instead of making 10 presentations every four weeks, you make 11

Number Four Sales Skill: Reconnect with all of your customers every 30 to 60 days
Do you have a customer loyalty plan where you contact your existing active customers every 30 to 60 days? How about your inactive ones? When was the last time you contacted them? Given that for your customers to maintain a top of mind awareness (TOMA) requires at least 3 contacts per month, what opportunities are you creating for your competitors to steal your customers?

Number Five Sales Skill: Leave your Ego at the door
When times are good and when times are bad, your ego should be left at the door. Customers do not owe you a sale nor do they owe you a referral. What you owe your customers is a trusted advisor who is more concerned about them than a sales person who is only concerned about himself or herself and making that next sale

Number Six Sales Skill: Be authentic in ALL actions
Are you truly authentic in all of your actions? Do you mean what you say? Do you follow up on all of your promises? Do you return all calls even when you know them to be potentially bad?

Number Seven Sales Skill: Listen more than you talk
Great sales professionals understand the value of listening. As said by many, if you were designed to talk more than to listen, you would have two mouths and only one ear. Use your two ears at least five times more than your mouth. As a wise man once told me: If you are telling, you ain’t selling.

Regardless if the economy is up or down, these 7 sales skills can keep your marketing and sales funnels full. You will increase sales and develop incredible strong customer loyalty.

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Article Tags: appointments, customer loyalty, cycle time, dollar value, ego, leadership skills, marketing, mind awareness, proposals, referral, referrals, sales numbers, sales producer, sales skill, self leadership, technical sales skills, time average, ups, when was the last time



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Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
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