Do anyone apart from me get little bored of the words thrown at you in the sales profession?

Does your sales manager teaches you to be good consultant and not just sales executive? Have you realized or understood the difference?

According to the oxford dictionary, Consultant means “A person who provides expert advice professionally”. The keyword to note here is expert advice, something like you are in the shoes of your prospect understanding the difficulties they face and you provide them an expert advice on how to overcome it. How many of your prospects really believe you are meeting them to understand their pain and do the right thing for them? Did you think about it ever? Sales is a mind game, you don’t get paid unless you sell something!

Well, let us have a quick glance on what can be done to acquire the trust of the prospects and convert it into sales, and more importantly gain the loyalty of the customer.

1: Truth will establish its roots: No matter what always be true to yourself and the prospect. One advantage is that you don’t have to remember what lie you told or did. It always wins heart!!

Say for instance, a project is getting delayed beyond the deadline, always let your customer to know why it is getting delayed. Most prospects and customers can deal with bad news but not surprises. If you are stuck up with something or if you think that you cannot do a project which they want, refer to someone else who you think can effectively complete it. This way, client will appreciate you and will return to you and refer new projects and may be some can encourage you to take it and learn.

2: Do a good research and find the issue. Your task as a sales professional is to find out the root cause of a prospects problem. You will certainly face the challenge in communicating to the prospect and making him believe that the issue faced by the client is not the real one and there is good alternate solution. You will need to learn the art of presentation before the prospect in such a way that they feel the project will be safe in your company’s hand.

3: Don’t forget the past. How many of us went for a date with our girlfriend or spouse and were really well mannered? Did you always try to improve your mannerism in the next dating with your girlfriend?

When we started our profession, we were so stupid in handling calls and always tried to improve, learn new things and always looked out for advice of the superiors in the profession. Just relax and think again, are you still curious enough to learning new things and improve your skills or have you settled with your enemy called EGO?

4: Be a one stop solution. Prospects and clients have lot of needs but very little time. May be once in a weekend, try meeting other domain related sales professionals and discuss with them about their products or services. It will increase your chances to win clients by offering solutions in a variety of domains, and of course your client will be impressed with the vast knowledge you have.

5. Talk with senses ON. Have you met any sales guy who talks a lot but he has not seen much success in sales, have you wondered what could be the reason? Prospects and clients can easily identify the sales guy who is making false promises and commitments. Some prospects can identify it in the beginning, some may hand over the project to test the company and in very less time they will understand that you made a mess of it and your company will lose a potential client once for all.

Strengthen Consultative Selling Skills for this Era of Highly Informed Clients.