It can be very hard to start a new career. Starting in sales comes with additional challenges which you are generally expected to learn on the job. The problem is that the longer you take to learn the longer you have to wait for your commissions to start rolling in. Fortunately, there are tips that you can use to help you get up to speed quickly.
Find Needs And Fill Them
Your prospective customers are not waiting around for you to call them and sell them something. They will be going about their lives trying to resolve their problems. If you are able to solve a problem that they have, you are more likely to make a sale. It is important to remember that prospects always want to know how their lives can be easier if they have your product.
Make Sure You Are Prepared
New salespeople are generally eager to get out into the world and face real live prospects because this is how they are going to make money. However, before you rush to your prospects, you need to ensure that you are correctly prepared. This means that you need to completely understand your product, have a solid sales presentation and at least have some basic cold calling script to work with. You should also look at completing some research on each lead before you contact them.
Build Your Network
It is possible to make your job easier by having a solid business network. There are many benefits to having a solid network of reliable contacts such as getting warm leads to getting the inside scoop on any hard prospects. It is important that you not rush with this as you need to start with proving yourself when you start to network. You should not try getting things from people before you have proven yourself.
Track Your Metrics
The only way that you are going to know if you are doing well is o keep track of what you are doing and analyze the end results. The minimum you should do is track the number of cold calls you make, how many appointments you have set and the number of sales that you have made. This information will allow you to manage your pipeline at a very basic level.
The more carefully you track your actions, the better you can assess them. You will also be able to pinpoint the areas that you need to work on to make more sales.
Set Your Own Goals
Your manager is going to give you a goal or a set of goals which you need to reach for the company. However, these goals are the bare minimum and they will not always cover all of the areas that are important to you. These coals will generally state that you should make a certain number of sales per month, but they will often not look at goals for career development or a monetary goal. These are the areas where you will have to create your own goals and create a plan that will help you achieve them. A lot of very successful salespeople get involved in medical sales according to Quintiles – these goal getters want to be the best they can be.
Learn Healthy Ways To Handle Rejection
Rejection is something that you are going to be faced with every day as a salesperson. Over time, every salesperson has to learn how to shrug these moments off, but the problem comes when you develop an unhealthy way of dealing with this rejection. Successful salespeople will often develop mind games that help them such as looking at every rejection as a step closer to an agreement. It is vital that you find a coping strategy that is healthy and that works for you.
Keep Trying New Things
Being in sales requires you to be flexible and able to keep learning. It can be hard for new salespeople to keep trying new things as it is tempting to latch onto a single style for security. This is a problem because you could end up in a rut which will lose you sales in the long-run. Learning and exploring new techniques is the only way that you will stay at the top of the game.