Professional Sales Skills

Lesson 1

Overview

During this lesson, you'll unlock the secret to your success as a sales professional. There's no magic in this procedure, and you're not predestined for success or failure. Good sales reps aren't born that way. This course will guide you to success in your sales efforts via planning, hard work, feedback, and practice.

Time Management

In this lesson, you'll examine three major components of a successful time management program: setting priorities, planning your time, and using commercially available time management tools. Mastering those concepts will enable you to build a meaningful time management system and integrate it into your schedule. Granted, many people have demands on their time that don't allow them all the flexibility they would like, so you'll spend some time learning about that, too.

Marketing

Your sales process begins with marketing. So in this lesson, you'll sharpen your skills in basic marketing techniques. You'll learn about how to get off to the right start and then build on that by examining cost versus benefits. Finally, you'll explore tactics associated with tracking the results of your marketing efforts.

Prospecting

Most new sales reps are intimidated by the thought of prospecting. In this lesson, you'll gain the basic tools that you need to excel at the art of prospecting to help you become the best prospector in your company. There are a variety of ways to prospect, including using the phone, direct mail, faxing, emails, and old-fashioned cold calling. You'll explore the basic components of each in this lesson, and you'll learn how to maximize your time while prospecting. By the end of the lesson, you'll see that prospecting isn't just easy to do—it can also be quite enjoyable!

Pipeline Management

In this lesson, you'll tackle the challenge of pipeline management by exploring three important areas. First, you'll see how to create your first pipeline management system. Next, you'll go further into the details of a prospect database—the core of your pipeline management system. Finally, you'll identify and define the key components of your system.

The Initial Call

In this lesson, you'll focus on an innovative approach in the sales world, called the "initial call." If you must select a single lesson in this course to master, this would be the one! As you go through this lesson, you'll begin by studying the structure of your first call. Second, you'll talk about a unique approach called a "site study" that will help move you toward closing the sale. Finally, you'll talk about preparing for the next step in the sales process.

Proposals

This lesson will give you the material you need to separate yourself from the majority of your competition by helping you with the art of executing a professional proposal. The first step is creating the proposal. There's a methodology to professional proposal creation, and in this lesson, you'll learn all the information you need to know to develop top-notch proposals. Proposal refinement and delivery are also important parts of the process, and the lesson will go over those in detail, too.

Presentations

A lot of sales professionals say that presentations are the most enjoyable part of the sales cycle. When you hire into a new company, this may be what they teach you first. Everyone is (or should be) proud of their product or service, and so they're excited to share it with others. In this lesson, you'll learn how to develop the most effective presentation techniques—the ones that will give you the greatest chance of winning the sale. You'll start by exploring presentation options, then move on to the structure of your presentation. Finally, you'll examine some of the presentation tools available to you.

Negotiating

This lesson will focus on the art of negotiating in the sales process. Sales negotiations are quite different from standard negotiations because you, the sales representative, are always doing a fine balancing act, trying to sell your prospect while negotiating a win-win-win situation. Sometimes the negotiating process can cause conflicts, so in this lesson, you'll learn how to identify and deal with these conflicts.

Closing the Account

If you were to ask professional sales reps about the aspect of sales they dread the most, a good percentage would respond, "Closing the sale!" However, if you were to ask the same professional sales reps about the aspect of sales they enjoy the most, an equal percentage may very well reply, "Closing the sale!" Why is there such a difference? The answer can be summarized in three words: training, confidence, and technique. By the time you finish this lesson, you'll be equipped with all three.

Account Management

The greatest resource any sales representative will ever have is a current list of customers. The company probably expended a great deal of effort and expense into acquiring these clients, so it makes sense that you should put a good deal of effort into retaining these clients. In this lesson, you'll learn how to protect this valuable asset. Most people think of their clients in the singular sense of people who are currently using their products. You should try to expand this thinking to include all people who have used your products or services. If they made a decision to buy your product at some time in the past, they remain your odds-on favorites to buy again in the future.

Putting Your Sales Plan Into Action

In the final lesson, you'll go over the major components of your secrets to sales success. If you've paid close attention to all the basics that were covered in the previous lessons, then you'll already know these secrets. By developing a comprehensive action plan that incorporates these strategies into your daily activities, you'll ensure your long-term success in the world of sales.