Many people rush into sales and rush out at the same. This trend is not unconnected to the many adverts that tend to make sales look like something that’s very easy. For sometimes now, acclaimed sales gurus have been making sales look like a walk in the park. Consequently, they have lured a lot of people into going into sales without making the proper preparations.
Even though sales is straightforward if you follow the right steps, there is still something you need to learn if you want to do well in sales. The mistake that many people make is that they rush into sales and then learn the hard way. Don’t be one of these persons. Sales is a skill, and for you to excel, you must master the skills.
As someone who wants to go into sales, think of yourself as a person who wants to go into the medical profession. Would you just wake up one morning and go to the hospital and start performing surgical operations on people? The answer is NO. You would, first of all, go to school and learn. The same applies to sales. You can’t just wake up one morning and go into sales; you must prepare yourself for the onerous task ahead.
So, how do you prepare yourself to be good at sales? Keep learning and applying the knowledge you are gathering. This is one of the surest ways to be well equipped before going into sales. There are also other tips you need to know before you go into sales, I have compiled some of them in this short guide. These are the top tips you need to excel; make sure you don’t go into sales without reading all of them. Without much ado, let’s get started.
Tip #1: Content & creative excellence and sales go hand in hand
We can say that this is the number one tip you need to know if you want to perform well at sales. Whether you are selling online or offline, you will always need to transmit content either in written form or oral form to your prospects. That’s why I said that content & creative excellence and sales go hand in hand.
You don’t have to be a Shakespeare, neither do you need to be the best orator, you just need to know how to create engaging content. Content can be text messages, blog posts, cold calls, a video, an image; it can be any format.
Remember, prospects don’t like promotional content, whether online or offline. So, you need to know how to create content that adds value. Your content should also be one that answers the fundamental questions of your consumers and give them reason to buy your product or service.
Tip #2: Develop technical skills
This particular tip is for those who want to go into online sales. Technical skills is a vital for you. As an online marketer, you will be doing a lot of technical stuff like hosting a blog, installing WordPress blog, setting up autoresponders, etc.
You don’t have to be a computer programming geek to possess technical skills. Simply knowing how to fix simple WordPress issues is enough. This skill will help you to be independent so that you don’t have to run around before getting assistance anytime you are in need of it.
Even as an offline marketer, technical skills still come in handy. If you are organizing seminars, you need to setup projectors and computers, microphones, and they all need specialized knowledge.
Tip #3: Learn necessary photo editing skills
This tip should have been merged with tip number two above because they are similar, but for clarity, I have decided not to blend them together. Whether you are into online or offline sales, you definitely need this particular skill.
You don’t need to be a professional graphic designer, but you should understand how visuals work. You should understand which colors go with each other and which ones don’t go together. This helps you to create amazing visuals for your products.
As I said earlier, you don’t need to be a graphics designer to possess photo editing skills. You don’t even need to have Photoshop, or Corel Draw or Illustrator installed on your computer to learn these skills. Technology has simplified the way we do virtually everything, and with simple “drag-n-drop” online tools like Canva.com, you can create amazing visual content suitable for any of your marketing needs – be it Facebook marketing, Instagram marketing, blog marketing, etc. A lot of pro marketers use Canva.com to create beautiful visual contents, and the most exciting thing about the tool is that it is free.
Tip #4: Develop strong data analysis skills
Whether you are into online or offline sales, you need reliable data analysis skills to excel. Data analysis is what helps you to understand your market and know where your business is coming from. Data analysis helps you to know whether your marketing efforts are yielding results or not. It shows you the areas in which you need to improve your efforts.
You don’t have to be a certified digital analyst, all you need is the ability to know how your marketing campaigns are faring, and the level of engagement they are commanding and your actions that lead to the most engagements.
Some tools can help get you started with digital analysis; Google analytics is one. Google analytics is a free analytics tool from Google that you can integrate into your blog to know where your audience is coming from and what devices they are using to access your posts.
Apart from Google Analytics, you can also use the built-in analytics tools that many social media and online sales platforms have to track useful information about your campaigns.
Tip #5: Develop a passion for sales
You may never be successful in sales if you are not passionate about it. At every point in time, you need to let your passion come across to your prospects.
It is important to note that sales isn’t a one-time learning thing. You have to keep learning every day. Talking about learning, you need to learn about your product or service. By learning about your product or service, you know more about it, and when you know about it, you can passionately pass information about it to others.
Innovation and sales work hand in hand, so you can innovate your ideas, product or services and pass on your innovations to your prospects or clients in a passionate manner.
Apart from showing passion in passing across your ideas or business to your audience, you also need to be passionate about sales as a whole. It is this passion that you show about sales that will keep you going on rainy days. One way to improve your passion for sales is to follow popular people who have excelled in sales. Learn how they have been doing it, and get inspiration from their success stories. Develop a passion for sales and watch yourself shine.
Bonus Tip: Learn to be a doer
In sales, it is essential that you be a doer. If you need to make a cold call, then make it. If you need to send email messages to prospects; do it. If you need to organize a seminar; do it. The keyword should be “DO.”
There is one good thing about doing something – you learn at the same time. As a marketer, don’t wait until you have mastered a particular job before doing it. As you hear of it or learn of it; start doing it immediately. It is natural to learn about various techniques, but the actual learning happens when you put all you have learned into practice.
As a marketer, it is good to learn about photo editing, but it will be best if you put it into practice. You should start doing a lot of email marketing on your own. You should start doing a lot of Facebook advertising on your own. You should start making a lot of cold calls. Don’t wait until you have accumulated all the techniques, as you are learning it, be putting it into practice, that’s the best way to learn.
Conclusion
In the introductory part of this piece, you saw that for you to excel in any field, you must be knowledgeable in that field. It is the information that is available to you that differentiates you from the other people in the same area.
Many times, people just want to follow the crowd and do the same thing. But one thing with doing what others are doing is that you will get the same results they are getting. If you don’t want to get the same results that others are getting in sales, then you need to be knowledgeable enough to differentiate yourself.
We have looked at the “Top 5 tips you need to excel in sales,” and it is best that you look inward and see how you can apply these tips. If you follow all the tips, you will differentiate yourself when you finally get into sales.
