Best tips and technologies for a salesperson to be successful in 2018

Any salesperson who wants to do really well must approach every opportunity fully prepared. Fortunately, there are many tools that will help you do just that. You can think of this as a toolkit, with a different tool for each part of the sales process. Knowing what these tools are and how to properly use them is an essential part of your success.

Source: https://www.salesreadinessgroup.com/blog/sales-grit-its-what-to-look-for-in-an-employee

Prospecting

Sales prospecting occurs when you make outbound calls or send outbound emails to your leads from the comfort of your own office. As you do this you’re talking to cold leads, hoping to turn them into a sale. You’re also reaching out to nurture any of your leads that have turned cold.

The key here is standing out from your competition. To do this you must do something that really captures their attention so they feel they need to meet with you and discuss the products or services you offer. There are a few ways you can do this, including:

• Create special reports to send to prospective clients so you build your own credibility. Make sure the cover page highlights your name so you look like the expert you are. This way your prospects think of you when they need information and eventually when they’re ready to buy your products or services.
• Host seminars as another way of building your credibility and initiating new relationships. These should address issues your target audience cares about and that your business solves.
• Always watch for a creative way to get your foot in the door. For instance, maybe you know a company that’s hiring and you know someone who’d make a good candidate. You could bring the person to the company’s attention.
• Befriend people who work in a business that’s not in direct competition with your business but with whom you’d share targeted prospects. This is as easy as thinking about what other products and services your target prospects buy and who sells these things. Take time to get to know the salespeople who work for those companies so you can create mutually beneficial relationships through which you share prospects.
• Get one of the successful sales persons in your company to mentor you. This will save you time because you’re not reinventing the wheel. Instead, you’re asking them things like how they became successful, how they got to the point where all they’re doing is servicing existing accounts, and how they initiated relationships with their most successful accounts. Then it’s up to you to decide which of these approaches would work well for you and start using them. Just remember, if something works for them, it doesn’t mean it will work for you. This is especially true if the tip or technique is outside of your comfort zone.

There are also a few tools you can use here to make this process easier. These are:

• MailTester.com allows you to check if an email address is valid.
• Sales Navigator uses intelligent suggestions to help you quickly find more people in your target accounts. This is great when you’re creating lists of leads or looking for how to connect with prospects.

Source: https://salesdrive.info/grit-and-the-successful-salesperson/

Outreach and Engagement

Once you’ve created a list of prospective buyers who show interest in interacting with you, it’s important you keep their interest. This is where you want them to stay until you’re able to move them to where they have a desire to close a deal with you.

During this time it’s vital that you encourage them to continue engaging with you. This is the best way for you to know what they’re thinking of your company and the products and services it offers. It’s advisable that you start slowly with the amount of time and effort you spend engaging with new clients and slowly offer more of it. After all, you don’t want your potential clients to feel as though you’re coming across with a lot of pressure for them to buy something.

Some of the tools you’ll want in your toolbox here include:

• Sendbloom is an app that connects Salesforce with Gmail so you can easily customize emails. You can then create a more targeted outreach by segmenting them according to location, industry, and job role.
• Calendly is a free, web-based tool. When you’re trying to schedule a meeting or an appointment with someone use it so you don’t play email or phone tag. Instead, it’s as simple as syncing your calendar then sharing a web link with your client so they can schedule a time to meet with you.
• Tenfold synchronizes your customer relationship management system with your phone so that you can easily track all of your phone calls. Once you set this up you can see the information you’ve noted about who’s calling before you answer the phone.
• Uberconference makes conferencing painless. It gives you an easy, powerful way of scheduling and running audio conferencing.

 Closing The Deal

Closing the deal is your goal – what your main focus has been on this entire time. J.Titan says that if you’re like most salespeople though, this probably isn’t your favorite part of the process. Of course, this is where you make money but you must be really precise in every detail of this process. Fortunately, there are some great tools available to help you here. These include:

• Handshake allows you to use your iPad and iPhone to capture orders. From there you can transfer them to the back office where your company handles shipping and handling.
• DocuSign allows you to securely send official documents to customers so they can sign them electronically.

Including these tools in your sales toolkit will help you become a highly successful salesperson. Since this is the type of salesperson you should always strive to be, investing time in learning how to use these tools is time well invested. So, spend some time introducing yourself to them today.

This guest post was written by Sheza Gary, a Project Strategist since 2009 Sheza has been involved in the launching of startups and tech companies in New York for over 5 years. Sheza has a keen interest in writing her experiences about business plans and upcoming business supporting technologies. You can visit Sheza Gary on Google+ and Twitter