Best sales tips for beginners and pros: detailed strategies

There are some basic sales tips and techniques that, once learned, will help anyone sell more successfully.

Resilience, tenacity and high energy are just some of the skills and characteristics that make great salespeople.

Entrepreneurs and startup founders, for example, may need to sell some of their products or services themselves in order to secure investment or new customers before they can afford to hire a specialist salesperson.

Selling is an art form, and mastering it is not easy.

With this in mind, here are some useful sales tips for both new and experienced salespeople.

Top sales tips for beginners

Let’s start with the basics. Here are five sales tips for beginners that will help you sell successfully.

#1. Know everything about your product

It’s essential that you understand how your product works and the specific features that will help your consumers solve any problems they may encounter. After all, you are the spokesperson for the product; if you don’t use it, why should anyone else?

Review all available product demonstration videos and support materials. Try to understand the purpose of each feature and the problem it is supposed to solve.

Some basic queries for which you need to provide excellent solutions to your consumers are

• I’m having trouble. Is there a feature in your product that can help solve this problem?
• What technology should I use to access these features?
• How customisable is your product?
• Will I get sales support or training?
• How much will it cost me?

Customers are not usually interested in the more technical parts of your product. They want to know how the product will make their lives easier right away.

A thorough understanding of the product does more than just make you a more confident advocate for what you are selling. It also allows you to quickly and thoroughly map your product to your customers’ desires and get to the root of their pain problems.

#2. Recognise the prospect’s pain points

Your prospects are only interested in one thing: solving their problems. You can only go so far in extolling the virtues of your product. What is the immediate benefit of your product to your prospect?
Ask questions during every engagement with a prospect to find out their main problems, such as:

• Could you help me understand your business processes a little better?
• What are your day-to-day goals? Any long-term goals?
• What are your main concerns and blockages?
• What are your hopes for the solution?
• Do you have any financial constraints?
• How much better would things be for you if you solved a specific problem?
• ow would this be done?

It is essential that you actively listen to the prospect’s answers. Too often salespeople are so focused on promoting and selling that they forget that the best salespeople sometimes listen more than they talk.

Provide a solution that addresses the buyer’s weaknesses. Sales pitches are most effective when you demonstrate to prospects that you understand their problems and that your solution can solve them.

#3. Get to know your customer in advance

Your prospects want answers and they expect you to provide them.
One of the best sales tips is to prepare all meetings in advance with all the information you might need to provide to your prospects to convert them into customers.

This means learning as much as possible about them and their situation. “Show them you know them”, as the expression goes.

Being well prepared for a meeting not only indicates your skills and knowledge, but it also shows that you care enough to be present and confident in all client meetings.

Make sure you understand the following:

• What is the purpose of the call for you?
• What information do I need from the call?
• What are the advantages of my product? Weaknesses?
• On your prospect’s side, who is the decision maker?
• If you have met before, where did you leave things last time?

A surprising number of salespeople do not study their prospects or prepare for calls, which weakens their efforts and leaves a negative impression on the prospect.

Pre-call preparation allows you to gather the information you need to bring value to the conversation. Developing this selling habit can inspire confidence in your prospects as well as confidence in your own selling abilities.

#4. Always follow up

If there’s one thing all sales professionals agree on, it’s the necessity of the follow-up step.

It doesn’t matter if you have the best product on the market or if your meetings are going well – if you don’t follow up with the prospect, the sales potential can slip through your fingers. In fact, 80% of sales require at least five follow-ups.

Follow-up emails are a great way to stay in touch with customers after your first meeting. It shows that you care enough about their experience to check in while allowing the conversation to flow at the customer’s convenience.

Follow-up emails can be categorized in several ways. Some great follow-up emails that professionals always send:

• Interested in connecting – Cold call follow-up
• It was a pleasure to talk to you earlier today… – Immediately after a meeting
• Continuation of our last conversation… – Next steps
• Should I stay or should I go? – Email fragmentation

Don’t be discouraged by a low open rate or lack of response from prospects. Be diligent in improving the quality of your emails and leads.

#5. Turn rejection into an advantage

There’s no easy way to say this when delivering sales advice, so let’s just rule it out: the two go hand in hand: sales and rejection.

Rejection is never easy, especially when you are new to sales. Competitors will occasionally swoop in and steal your lead. Some consumers do not need your product or are not in a position to pay the money at the moment.

• It is essential to recognise that none of this is personal.
• There may be hundreds of reasons why a consumer is not interested in what you sell, but the majority of them have nothing to do with you.
• Rejection exposes the flaws in your sales strategy. What’s the good news? You can turn the flaws in your pitch into strengths with the right changes.
• Every rejection helps thicken your skin and improve your resolve, two attributes that will help you become a good salesperson.
• Don’t let rejection defeat you; instead, see it as an opportunity for progress.

Tips for advanced salespeople

So you’ve mastered the basics of selling, but every day of work is still difficult. Congratulations, you are now a salesperson!

Now, how can you take your sales game to the next level and consistently exceed your quota? There are some simple sales tips you can use to keep up with the market and make the most of your time with customers.

#1. Effective time management

It’s no secret that time is money in sales. Therefore, think of calendar blocks as the commodities they are.

A salesperson’s life can be like a juggling act with a dozen balls in the air. Prioritising your time and making the most of every hour of the day is a crucial sales technique.

To be a good salesperson, your calendar should be the first thing you look at in the morning, the last thing you look at before you go to bed and something you are constantly aware of in the intervening hours.

Getting caught up in a conversation with a customer is a big time waster for salespeople. While it is essential to engage with customers on a personal and cordial level, you also need to know when to get to the point.

Spend more time on deals that will generate more revenue. This doesn’t mean you should ignore clients who are willing to spend less money, but it is essential to prioritise your client list and make the most of your time.

#2. Use the right technology

All the consumer information a salesperson needs is now available in a few clicks, thanks to mobile devices. Using these advanced tools designed specifically for your needs is the best sales technique.

You can use some of the most powerful sales technology in the world by using the right tools to organize your day, keep your customers happy and have all the important information at your fingertips at all times.

Digital calendars and appointment scheduling software can help you organize your day. It’s also useful for matching your calendar to your customers’ schedules.

Industry favorites include Google Calendar and Outlook Calendar, while Calendly’s integration allows prospects to book meetings on the days and times that suit them best.

One of the most time-consuming aspects of an outside salesperson’s day is the time spent behind the wheel. Using the right technology to optimise your routes will save you time and money on gas and vehicle wear and tear.

#3. Recognise your prospect’s role

There is no “one size fits all” sales strategy. Sometimes the person you are talking to is not the one with the buying power.

Sometimes you are talking to the CEO, who wants you to impress them with your sales pitch. And occasionally, your customer is a regular Joe looking for a good reason to spend their hard-earned money.

Do your homework before each client engagement to find out who you will be talking to and where they are in their company’s hierarchy.

#4. Never give up prospecting

There is no such thing as complacency in sales.

In this business, complacency is never rewarded. It is essential to always have new business on the horizon in order to have continued success as a salesperson. The only way to achieve this is to recruit regularly.

Always be on the lookout for new business prospects, whether they come from customer referrals or your own prospecting. You can find and interact more successfully with the people who need your products if you identify and understand who your customers are.

Prospecting technology is one of the most effective ways to find prospects. The Internet is a goldmine of customer information. One of the best business prospecting tips, as mentioned above, is to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a fantastic prospecting tool that can provide you with a wealth of business opportunities.

There is also the traditional method. Phone canvassing and emails are still effective ways to interact with prospects while demonstrating your willingness to make the effort to close the business.

#5. Improve your objection handling

Rejection is a big part of sales, remember?

You can turn some of those rejections into successes with experience, answering objections and a little know-how. All it takes is the right attitude to the problems your customers might have.

This comes down to product expertise and understanding the intricacies of your product – both the good and the bad.

Think of your sales plan as a chess game. Always be three steps ahead of your consumers and predict their moves, both positive and negative. Countering these concerns and steering the conversation becomes second nature if you have a plan in place for every potential objection.

Don’t wait for prospects to express their concerns. Bring them in first to set the stage for blocking. This way, you own the objection while demonstrating that you are someone the customer can rely on to see things from their perspective.

#6. Connect with empathy

If the customer doesn’t trust you, they are unlikely to buy your product.
No one likes to be misled into buying something by someone who is only interested in their money.

That’s why it’s essential to engage with customers in a meaningful and personal way, rather than just talking to them.

Empathy is one of the key characteristics that distinguish great salespeople from great salespeople.

Sales empathy involves getting to know your consumers as if they were friends and tailoring your message to their personality types and concerns. It is about genuinely wanting to help them and cooperating to do so.

The ability to put yourself in your customers’ shoes and guide them through the buying process is essential to building trust and loyalty. The longer and happier a customer connection is, the more successful it can be for both parties involved.

This is a difficult skill to teach, but it can be built up like a muscle. It just takes practice. When dealing with consumers, forget about money; think of yourself as two buddies, one with a problem and one with a solution.

#7. Focus on quality over quantity

Many people are confused when they look for sales advice: isn’t it better to have more customers than fewer?

What is the solution? It all depends.

Having too many balls in the air during the sales juggling performance can be intimidating and confusing. Not only can it become too much to handle, but every customer’s experience suffers when you get bogged down with a customer list that is simply too long.

It’s tempting to want to make as many sales as possible as quickly as possible in order to impress your superiors and feel like you’ve performed well.
What is the solution? This can quickly lead to burnout, as well as a drop in the sales figures you were aiming for.

Instead, focus on acquiring more high-quality customers who you can rely on for continued, stable and reliable income. Plan your days so that these consumers receive the majority of your attention.

#8. Maintain consistency and integrity

It is essential that each of your consumers receives the same high quality pitch for your product and that your sales strategy remains consistent throughout each engagement.

Your presentation will become almost effortless if you ensure that your sales interactions are consistent and conducted in a way that demonstrates discipline and attention to your skills.

Hard work, like most other vocations, will sometimes take you far. At every turn, you will face stiff competition. Month after month, your managers expect results. Make the effort, and everything else will fall into place.

If you tell a customer that you will be there at a certain time, make sure you are on time. If you tell a consumer that a feature will solve a problem, you have to tell the truth. Because if you lose a customer’s trust, it’s lost forever. That’s a hard thing to get back.

If you think something in your pitch needs to be changed, don’t put it off until later. The beautiful thing about sales is that you have many opportunities to try new tactics. Experiment with customers to see what works and what doesn’t, then refine your pitch for maximum impact.

#9. Implement a measurable and repeatable sales process

Metrics are a salesperson’s best friend when applied effectively.
You can track the effectiveness of your pitch to customers by using a repeatable sales process.

Then you can keep an eye on your statistics and see how each minor adjustment to your method affects the bigger picture.

Understanding the flow and volatility of your numbers can help you determine the success of your customer contacts and whether you should stay the course or make adjustments to your process.

Determine which KPIs are most important in your specific sales situation and keep an eye on them as you go along. If the metrics that are most important to you are not quite where you want them to be, make significant changes just to increase those numbers.

If your stats drop significantly, you will have a variety of information to identify how and why this happened, as well as what you can do about it.

The best salespeople have a basic process that they use every time they contact a customer, but they also recognise that these processes need to adapt from time to time to remain competitive.

#10. Looking for references

Despite technological developments over the past few decades, one thing has not changed: word of mouth is still the most effective and reliable way to contact new customers and win their business.

When a consumer suggests you to a prospect, it makes an instant and reliable connection that money can’t buy. It is now easier than ever to engage and acquire a new consumer.

Nothing sparks a potential customer’s interest more than a positive comment about a product that could benefit them from a peer they admire. Why wouldn’t it work for them if it worked for someone else? Referrals are essential for developing a customer base as your customers do the work for you.

Not only is it the most effective type of prospecting and promotion, it’s free!
What are the best strategies for converting your best customers into referral machines? Look at your customer list and consider the following:

The length of your partnership

Overall customer satisfaction with your product or service
Frequency of communication between you and the customer
How attentive is the customer?

Approach your best customers and ask them if they would be willing to suggest you to people they know who could benefit from your product.
LinkedIn is also a great resource to learn more about your customer’s relationships, and then follow up those connections with a recommendation from your customer.

Additional general sales tips

If you are experiencing a drop in sales, set some short, achievable goals to generate momentum and build confidence.

Create a “sales intent statement” and use it to guide your decision-making process to make better, more thoughtful decisions.

Keith Ferrazzi, author of Never Eat Alone: The Art of Eating Alone, advises you to believe in what you are selling. “You’ll never get there if you believe that all you have is your transaction – you have to produce a product that is so incredibly wonderful that you realise you’re inviting people into what is an absolutely delightful (and long-term) relationship. ”

• Solve customers’ problems directly and show how you will improve, then do it.
• Your sales manager can be a fantastic resource, but you need to ask the right questions (including the hard ones, such as “Why do you think we lost this business?”).
• Set – and stick to – specific activity targets to keep you motivated when you feel demotivated.
• Attend call reviews, advises Michael Pici, HubSpot’s director of sales. “You’re missing out on a major opportunity to increase your sales success if you don’t run or attend call reviews.”
• Never stop learning: keep your product knowledge up to date by role-playing sales calls and reading industry news.

Conclusion

Whether you are just starting out or have been doing it for years, selling is a never-ending process that requires you to evolve to be competitive. Just when you think you have it all figured out, industry developments push you to adapt.

By viewing sales as a continuous development of your own process, you can not only survive, but succeed in one of the most competitive and exciting businesses in the world.