A fledgling sales rep can struggle with self-confidence issues and imposter syndrome. Sales leaders have to be prepared with the right language, resources, and tools to help new recruits overcome their nerves and channel their enthusiasm in a constructive manner. To accelerate your new hires’ learning curve, adopt this cutting-edge sales training tool. Featuring performance tracking and offering instant feedback, Attention ramps up your sales reps in just a few weeks. Couple this software solution with the following tips and tricks to help motivate and support the absolute beginners at your sales organization.
1. Leave fear at the door
At the beginning of their sales journey, many sales reps feel shaken by the thought of interacting with real-life prospects. A good way to override this common source of anxiety is to remind sales reps that prospects don’t have any actual power over them. Prospects are just potential clients, nothing less and nothing more! It’s helpful to ask junior reps to consider the “worst-case scenario”. A deal can fall through, a contact can fall through the cracks. In either case, it’s highly improbable that customers will inflict any permanent damage on you or your team, and they certainly can’t tangibly harm you! Sales reps, approach all communications with prospects with this reality in mind, and you’ll feel a lot more comfortable conversing with clients big and small in the future.
2. Stick to the basics
Ambitious beginners often feel the need to find a new, better way to get things done. But the truth is, the tried and proven path is in more cases than not the way to go for absolute beginners. While sales leaders should not discourage innovative and out-of-the-box thinking, it’s helpful to remind sales reps that there are significant advantages to sticking to the basics and adopting what has worked in the past for your team. Following instructions, asking for help, and taking advice from your more experienced peers will never go out of fashion!
3. Keep your intro short, sweet, and memorized
An easy way to recognize a pro from a newbie is whether they can stay on-topic during sales conversations. During the first few seconds of a call, it’s particularly important to showcase a clear communication style packed with salient points. Rambling is a sure-fire way to reveal your newness to the sales space, so keep your introduction succinct and to-the-point to make sure your listener stays interested and receptive to the substantive content that follows.
4. Give the prospect a chance to talk
Another rookie mistake is to monopolize the conversation rather than offering multiple opportunities for the customer to express their thoughts, pose questions, or simply process your proposal. Save monologues for the theater – they won’t serve you well in sales. That’s because prospects that talk more during calls are more likely to take the relationship to the next level. Sales training lessons should instruct sales reps in the art of creating appropriate opportunities for prospects to get a word in and share their thoughts. Asking questions will be key here!
5. Be a problem-solver
Maintain a problem-solving approach when speaking with prospects. This will help you stay focused on calls and avoid straying into irrelevant conversational territory. Brand new sales reps tend to over-share or pitch a product in personal rather than buyer-oriented terms. Buyers don’t really care about your life, your ideas, or your preferences. It’s not at all personal, but to buyers, sellers exist primarily to provide them with solutions to their everyday challenges. If you’re not doing an effective job at tailoring the value of your product or service to their specific problems or concerns, then it’s unlikely the seller will want to move forward with the deal.
6. Be professional, but not servile
Striking the right tone with prospects is no easy task. You want to be respectful and conscientious of the prospect’s position, but you also want to signal that you consider the buyer to be a peer, not a superior. No one likes grovelling in a sales context. It’s awkward for both parties, and makes the listener take the speaker less seriously. So during sales training lessons, ask senior reps or sales coach to provide candid feedback on your tone to ensure you’re coming across as persuasive and professional without sounding desperate.
7. Learn to use sales battlecards
This is the life-hack new sales reps will want to hear more about. A sales battlecard sounds quite fancy, but is in fact just an easy-to-read summary of relevant points, questions, evidence, or other information that can come in handy during conversations with buyers. Thanks to real time conversation intelligence, Attention empowers sales reps with live sales battlecards using voice-activated cues. That means you won’t even have to search for the specific card on your computer during calls, you just have to become familiar enough with the battlecards to incorporate the content into calls in a natural way.
8. Stay on your toes
This piece of advice applies to everything from following up with prospects in a timely way to making sure you’re constantly evolving as a salesperson. Staying on your toes is important because the sales landscape is always changing. Learning should therefore be a continuous process. Even if you think you’ve mastered a skill, it’s important to go back and review your training materials and past feedback. Otherwise, you might start slipping into old, pre-training habits as time goes by. Be proactive about staying informed; stay tuned to market developments, read and use updated marketing materials, and follow shifts in company goals. It’s also useful to avoid outgrowing your initial enthusiasm. Keeping up the energetic disposition of your early training days will help keep you excited about your work, your team, and your product. A passion for sales is what will truly distinguish you from the competition.
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