smallbusiness.co.uk: Helping your business think big

Many people regard salespeople as liars, cheats and commercial vultures. Some salespeople may be like this; while others can be more successful by being honest and responsible, but by paying attention to every small detail and developing their own selling style to match the product, as well as their own character.

What you need to do to improve your selling skills is develop a sales strategy, which can be simple but which should be applied to every sale. One approach is to produce a series of lists. These should include:

• main features of your product
• major benefits it offers
• most likely objections and your planned response
• advantages and weaknesses of competitive products
• the key characteristics of your potential customer
• in what ways your product meets the customer’s needs or wants.

There are also simple rules you can follow which will vastly improve your selling ability:

• know your product
• listen to your buyer
• relate what you are selling to your customer’s needs and wants
• plan your sales strategy for each prospective customer, so that you know what you want to achieve at each stage of the negotiation
• have clear and well-worked-out sales presentations, demonstrations or telephone calls
• make sure at all times that you know who the decision-maker is in your prospective client’s business.

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