Salespeople are the frontline in your company, and for many customers, they represent your business. In a small or medium-sized business, they are particularly important to compete with larger-scale companies that may offer less personal service. Your salespeople are one way to stand out from the crowd, so you don't want to hire order-takers. Ultimately, you want well-rounded people who are knowledgeable, personable and really enjoy what they do.
In that light, how you select your salespeople and train them is a priority for any entrepreneur.
Find the top sales attributes
These are some of the key attributes that any entrepreneur should look and test for when selecting candidates. You might try role-playing during interviews to get a sense of your candidate's personality.
Judgement: common sense, maturity and intelligence are at the top of the list of ideal attributes. A salesperson with good judgement has the ability to feel out a situation instinctively and react accordingly. Ultimately, it's not a function of age.
Openness: there should be an openness to accept suggestions and willingness to learn. Customers want to feel that they have an open ear.
Appropriate personal appearance: your salesperson should dress and look the part. The individual should represent what your company sells.
Train your staff well
If you want salespeople who excel, it's essential to teach them to:
Know your business inside out. It's your job to make sure that your employees are armed with the information that they need since your sales performance largely depends on how knowledgeable your staff are about your company. Consider important factors such as policies, procedures and rules, operation of equipment, target market knowledge and product knowledge.
Manage your customers. Your employees should know how to calculate the true value of your customers, i.e., how much they will spend with you and what they are likely to buy over the long term. Teach them to identify types of customers:
- Customers who are loyal to you and have high buying potential (your gold customers) should be their major focus.
- Customers who switch companies readily and whose buying potential warrants your efforts to attract them (shop-a-holics who are looking for products and judge mercilessly quality, service and price.)
- Customers who are loyal to you but whose buying potential is low (lack of money or interest; however, their loyalty can bring you other customers.)
- Customers whose loyalty and buying potential you cannot judge (often buyers who are looking for the lowest price or are in a rush.)
Excel in making the initial contact. In the retail business you should respond to customers as soon as they walk into a sales area even if they can't be attended to immediately. Salespeople should be instructed to tell waiting customers that they'll be with them momentarily. This can reduce the number of clients who leave your premises without being served.
Prospect new clients and build repeat business with current customers. By using newspapers and personal contacts, for example, a salesperson can expand your customer base. However, a firm's best prospects are its current clients. A salesperson should make a point of calling regular customers on a periodic basis to tell them about products or services.
Present merchandise so that it sells. Your salesperson needs to know exactly what makes a customer buy and this comes largely from product knowledge. Key here is selling benefits and not just features. Ask your salespeople to think like a customer. What would I want if I were in their shoes?
Adapt sales presentations. This involves knowing what information is needed to sell to a particular customer and how that information should be presented. Canned sales presentations don't do the job.
Handle resistance. Employees should know that resistance to buying is inevitable. Teach them to overcome objections delicately. For example, a good salesperson will find a way to politely counter-question a client. For instance, why doesn't the style of this computer not suit your tastes? Or a salesperson might want to restate an objection; you feel that this computer is out of style?
Go the extra mile. Encourage your salespeople to make additional sales. It's important they avoid being too generic with statements such as "Can I get you something else?" It would be more effective to say: "Can I find you a shirt that goes with those pants?" A strong salesperson would bring the additional item and show it to the customer.
Always do follow-up. Most businesses lose customers by ignoring them after the sale. Sales follow-up builds goodwill and repeat business. It shows that you care about your customers and builds an opportunity for additional sales. Use simple follow-up methods such as thank you cards, post-sales calls or announcements of upcoming sales.
Excel in best practices
Be strategic when prospecting. Prospects are busy people. Then there's that little innovation that has made call screening and even call avoidance as easy as pushing a button: voice mail. Does this mean the door is permanently closed? Absolutely not. It means only that prospects aren't sitting around waiting to hear from you and that you've got to do some fancy footwork to get your audience. Accept it and you'll take the inevitable frustration that comes with not getting through at times in stride.
Time your approach. Call it the post- and pre-weekend syndrome, but most people don't like to be approached for business on Mondays or Fridays. That leaves three days of week when you're most likely to get through. As for time of day, avoid the 9:30 to 11:30 slot and the 1:30 to 4:00 slot. These are times when people are usually into their projects or in meetings. The early mornings (8 to 9:30) and late afternoons (4:00 to 5:30) are your prime selling times.
Probe for the right person. The decision-maker for your product or service can be elusive. Even titles like "Marketing Manager" can be misleading. No problem. Simply ask to speak to an office manager or administrative assistant, introduce yourself, explain briefly what you're selling, and ask for the name of the person you should be talking to.
Avoid over-familiarity. People you speak to for the first time should be addressed as Mr. or Ms. Certain prospects who hear themselves being called "Jim" or "Marie" by perfect strangers will be turned off permanently. True, some won't mind at all, but ask yourself if the rush to be best friends is worth the risk.
Talk less, listen more. Listening is the forgotten side of the selling equation. In fact, you should limit what you say about yourself and your company in favour of asking questions related to your product or service that get prospects talking about their needs. Very often, if you let them speak, prospects will tell you precisely how to sell to them, including when to call, who to approach, and how much to charge.
Leave messages. You may be shy to leave a message in a new prospect's voice-mail box. Don't be. Assuming your message is short and polite, and particularly if you ask something simple that the prospect will feel compelled to answer, chances are good you'll get a return call. Just be wary about leaving a series of messages for the same person under the heading of persistence. The prospect might see that as pestering.
Keep meticulous records. Because selling is a process that starts today and finishes any number of follow-ups later, you need detailed records of every call. At the very least you need to know what was said so that you can a) call back when you said you would or b) call back when the prospect asked you to. Contact-manager computer programs will make this record-keeping chore a breeze.
Don't push. Gaining a prospect's trust can take time. Be sensitive to this and never push for an order. Let prospects move at their own pace. In the end, your patience will contribute to a climate wherein the prospect feels comfortable doing business with you and this will lead to the sale.
