Professional Selling Skills- What makes a Good Salesman
Sales are a crucial component of every business organization. It drives every business because it provides a means through which the business can generate sales revenues and develop long-lasting customer trust and loyalty through the interactions on sales presentations. It will have direct implications on the growth of the company. It will directly impact the growth of the business, in the sense that if the sales team engages the customer professionally and in the right way, the customer will make a purchase and recommend someone via positive feedback leading to the creation and increase in brand awareness.
In the research conducted by David and Herbert to determine the course for the high turnover in the insurance industry, they discovered that it was due to competency issues. Their research was clarifying the specific skills demanded by the market for salespeople to be more successful. David et al. (2006) concluded that any salesperson would only require two fundamental characteristics in order to successfully close sales deals; ego drive and empathy. They argued that empathy enables personalized sales experience where the salesperson will attempt to understand how the customer feels and be able to sense customer reactions and respond accordingly in time. He should not be fixed to the sales track but should be flexible and creative in real customer experience. They added that a good salesperson must have an ego drive that gives them the zeal to make a sale and consider the customer a partner who will enable him to achieve the target.
I agree with their findings in the sense that a good salesperson is supposed to have emotional intelligence with a blend of high adaptability sense and a passionate desire to conquer by employing powerful sales techniques in order to enhance the said ego. However, there is so much that a salesperson needs to have as qualities that they cannot just be sufficiently summarized in only two traits. Customer consumer needs to keep on evolving, and hence the need to adjust the approach. We will evaluate the applicability of these two traits in sales today and establish other traits that may be necessary to be a successful salesman.
Empathy and ego are the main traits that define an excellent salesperson. In order to test the truth of that statement, it is vital to appreciate the fact that there are rules in sales that every good salesperson should follow to be successful, without which their emotional attachment and self-drive become secondary. For instance, a sales presentation is like a corridor leading straight to the deal. It has doors on the sides that the customer can exit through and not arrive in the deal. These “exits” are potential reasons why the customer will not buy, and a good salesperson is supposed to “shut” them by asking the customer-specific tying questions in anticipation of that excuse. In that process, the salesman must avoid mentioning the price until the end of the presentation when he has thoroughly convinced the customer and that there is nothing apart from the price that can stop the customer from purchasing the product. In short, a good salesperson must understand the product he is selling, the customer perceptions and must love the product he is selling, since you can’t easily convince someone to buy what you do not like. This is because there is a need to create a common ground between the salesman and the client.
Today, the sales approach is to maintain customer loyalty and trust. We are to analyze the truth in statements that empathy and ego drive are essential salesmanship traits in the modern marketing approach of maintaining customer loyalty. The two characteristics become of relevance in the contemporary sales approach, which focuses on selling relationships with customers instead of just focusing on striking sales deals without regard to whether the customer will be back tomorrow or whether he/she might recommend the product to a friend. In order to grow a strong customer base in today’s highly competitive world, the initial sales presentation must not just end at closing a deal. It must be focused on creating a lasting relationship with the customer that is built on trust, which is achieved by the salesman’s ability to express that the business is determined to solve their continuing needs and on-going problems. The ability to appreciate the client’s value to be more than the amount due to a single sales transaction is what matters, and empathy plays an important role.
A good salesman is supposed to prioritize the customer’s needs that the product is seeking to solve more than his own need to make sales in order to earn a living. Empathy is crucial here, yet ego drive may be misleading. Every salesperson needs to understand that people will only buy when they are prepared to do so and not because you are prepared to sell the product to them. In this case, good salesmanship will entail the ability to help a customer develop or possibly realize the need and sense for urgency, so as to change that “never” to “not now” and “not now” to “now.” Creating a personal connection through empathy will work in such a case. However, the ego drive that gives the salesman a “must sell” attitude will make him egocentric. He will want to focus on why he wants to sell to satisfy his ego and not why the customer must buy and help that customer identify the reasons they should buy that day.
Many salespeople’s failure to relate with the customer and help them identify their needs in the product has led to the tendency to focus on demonstrating to the customer that the product is cheaper than focusing on the value of the product to the customer. Sometimes ego can make you overlook this vital aspect because customers want low cost and not low price as many perceive. In fact, lowering the price is interpreted by the prospective customer as the lowering of value.
Conclusion
The research findings significantly contributed to understanding some aspects of what a salesperson should possess. However, in the current business world, a “hybrid” salesman with multiple talents, creativity, and traits is needed to handle a much more complex and evolved customer. Today’s market does not as much rely on a standard formula or qualities to approach customers since there are a variety of unique customers that require a customized approach. A good salesperson must understand the product, believe in it, and follow the customer. Nevertheless, the power of personal selling cannot be overlooked as a tool to persuade, educate, create, and retain customers.
Works cited
Mayer, David, and Herbert M. Greenberg. “What makes a good salesman.” Harvard Business Review 42.4 (1964): 119-125.
Argade, S. L. “Salesmanship-MCQs.” (2020).
Cuevas, Javier Marcos. “The transformation of professional selling: Implications for leading the modern sales organization.” Industrial Marketing Management 69 (2018): 198-208.