Tweet

Are You a True Salels Professiona

Guest post by: Dr. Rick Johnson

Article Overview: Salesmanship is a learned skill. You can perfect that skill. Yes, it does help to have an outgoing personality, high self-esteem and an ego to become a real pro. But, these attributes alone won't make you successful. Confidence in yourself, confidence in your products and confidence in your company are also key ingredients. The only way to gain this kind of ultimate confidence and become a true sales professional is by attaining knowledge. Study your products, understand your value propositions and understand what your competitive advantage is. Success is rarely an accident. Success is generally the result of a combination of motivation, attitude, skill and knowledge. Not everybody can be a professional sales person. If you are --- you are special.

Are You a True Salels Professiona

Salesmanship is a learned skill. You can perfect that skill. Yes, it does help to have an outgoing personality, high self-esteem and an ego to become a real pro. But, these attributes alone won't make you successful. Confidence in yourself, confidence in your products and confidence in your company are also key ingredients. The only way to gain this kind of ultimate confidence and become a true sales professional is by attaining knowledge. Study your products, understand your value propositions and understand what your competitive advantage is. Success is rarely an accident. Success is generally the result of a combination of motivation, attitude, skill and knowledge. Not everybody can be a professional sales person. If you are --- you are special.

• Becoming a sales pro is based on knowledge and skill level becomes even more prevalent as you gain experience. This formula for success is created from a myriad of sources including anecdotal advice from sales managers, peers, mentors and on the job experience dealing with specific challenges. Structured training and educational programs are also key components of this formula.

2011 will bring us business development challenges most sales people have never had to deal with or haven't dealt with in many years. That means every professional sales person whether they are rookies or seasoned veterans must revisit their own success model and refine it according to current circumstances and economic market conditions.

Revisit the Basics

Professional sales people understand that best practice is a basic platform for sales success. To be truly effective and follow best practice involves focus, process, discipline and accountability. The sales team at most companies consist of all the individuals involved in the sales/marketing channel that serves the end user. Ideally, it should be a professionally coordinated network, with strong alignment of individual activities with focus on objectives, process for continuous improvement, discipline toward utilizing best practice throughout the sales process and accountability for performance at all levels.

Understanding is the Key

To become a real professional sales persons means understanding yourself first. Determine your strengths. Recognize your weaknesses. Make a vow to work on improving those areas where you are weak. To excel at anything you must have confidence and confidence comes from experience and knowledge. Recognizing your weakness puts you in a position of strength because you become familiar with your limitations and what you need to do to overcome them. Personal understanding is critical to understanding your customers.

Value Propositions

Don't blow this concept off as some sales training jargon. Value propositions are extremely important. You have one, your company has one and your products have them. What is it about you that creates value for your customer? What is it about your company that creates value for your customer? What is it about your product that creates value for your customer? It's not features and benefits.

Be Honest with Yourself

The road to success in sales requires a kind of personal honesty that not everyone is capable of exercising. That specifically is why we all can't be superstars. Part of becoming a superstar in sales is understanding people so well that building relationship equity is almost automatic. A skill that becomes inherent to your personification. This can't happen unless you understand yourself first. People grow and change, you grow and change so this concept of knowing yourself and really knowing your customers is a living changing thing that you must always be conscious of. The more your customers change, the more you must change and adjust. This requires a certain amount of intuitive judgment and a perspective on helping the customer solve their problems to such an extent that you can see the forest in spite of the trees.

Sales is a Profession to be Proud Of

Learning your product, making a clear presentation to qualified prospects, and closing more sales will take a lot less time once you know your own capabilities and failings, and you understand and care about the prospects you are calling upon. You must become a total solution provider regardless of the circumstance or situation. Selling occurs all around us all day long. Our mere existence is predicated upon selling something all the time. That something can be anything from a product to an idea, a concept or even a philosophy.

Anybody can sell to some degree and we all do it without exception. However, to be a professional sales person, accepting these concepts as truths is the starting point. Accepting the concepts described in this article will enable you to understand that salesmanship is not a born trait. Agreed, there are some personality traits that may help you create success quicker but true professional sales skills are learned.

An old sales buddy of mine once said;

"You can send a gorilla out on the road and if he calls on enough people, if he doesn't give up, sooner or later someone will pin an order to his chest and send him home." --------Brian Williamson

Maybe you know some sales people like that. If you do rest assured they aren't the professionals we are talking about. Sales is a profession that requires professionals. It's a profession to be proud of. It requires persistence, tenacity, confidence and understanding. Study yourself, study people, do your homework and never forget the basics. Targeting, goal setting, action planning and follow-up never go out of fashion no matter how experienced you become. Never forget where you came from and how you created the success you create.

Getting up out of bed in the morning; doing what has to be done to excel in sales; keeping records, updating your materials; planning the direction of further sales efforts; and all the while increasing your own knowledge - all this definitely requires personal motivation, discipline, and energy. Being a professional sales person is not easy. It demands creativity and innovative thinking.

Related Articles
  Like a dream come true
  Where to Find Financial Freedom Resources
  LEADERSHIP MEANS REALISING TRUE POTENTIALS
  I need more money but…………..
  It’s my judgment, so it must be right!
  Personal Branding to Help You Standout From The Crowd and Boom Your Business
  How to Regain Your Mission Statement for Life
  Are you a Chameleon?
  Personal Success - Are You Trying To Impress?
  "There's Too Much To Do"
  Look Within
  Success: Why Women Don’t Need To Compete
  Intent Versus Content
  Be True To Yourself As A Manager
  Are Your Whiteboards Helping Or Hurting?
  The 4 Simple Secrets For Creating True Wealth
  The 4 Simple Secrets to Creating True Wealth
  Meaning of Wisdom – It’s a 3-step process
  Misconceptions About VoIP
  What Makes You Different?

Article Tags: competitive advantage, professional sales person, salesmanship, true sales, value propositions



Related Forum Posts
Diamonds vs. squares - True True - I put on 10 pounds after eating sliced cheese that was endorsed by a wrestler when I was a kid... A diamond shreddie is a lot cheaper than LeBron James - LOL!
Re: Web Idea - Hi Som, Welcome aboard. Almost everything that I can add is already mentioned by the ever-active, respected members of the Forum. But I would like to bring it to your attention that whenever we have our idea and nurture it for long, it becomes something like our baby and we are all possessive about that. True. Now the question is that as we are mostly possessive of our idea how far can we go about it? I mean, you say your idea is fresh as morning coffee. True to you but have you researched and actually tried to find out the feasibility part of it? I have also been a programmer and as such I feel that many of the ideas that we have generally look seemingly better in book but when it comes to reality, there is a difference. So I would recommend you to re-consider the idea. Not as Som but as someone who is a client of the idea. Please step into the shoes and find out whether you would go for the product as a client! If yes, then lets start with doing a market research and the follow up with the other formalities. Reason being that its getting late and the Coffee may lose its freshness! Good Luck,
Re: Email Marketing Benefits - Yes GT, True. It's a quite bit to challenge to provide interested content in emails. Robert
Re: Can Google Alerts Increase Your Search Engine Rankings? - True enough, google alerts can help you a lot in SEO. Like what you said, it is a very wonderful tool that can increase the search engine traffic of your site, but of course like everything else, you need to utilize it properly in the first place.
Re: Quote of the Day - ??"To be successful as an entrepreneur yo - True and when you do find this it never feels like work no matter how hard you have to work at it. MichelleJ


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Download a template or see a lawyer?

20 MORE Must-Have Search Engine Marketing Tools

Stay Employed In A Down Economy

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.