New to Sales? Here Are 6 Sales Tips That Will Help You Succeed

If you don’t think you’re good at sales, you better start learning. Even if your position has nothing to do with sales, you’re still going to need to learn how to do it. Whether you’re going to close a multimillion dollar deal or convincing your partner where you want to eat dinner, it all requires the same basic set of skills.

If you’re new to sales, here are six sales tips that will help you succeed.

Be disciplined and stay consistent

If you want to become a great salesperson you need to put in the hours. All too often we hear about the quick-tips, hacks, and one-off strategies that will help you close more deals. While those strategies may work every once in a while they won’t do you in favors in the long run.

You need to teach yourself how to perform at 100% every day regardless of the outcome. Throughout your entire sales career you’re going to experience times of total brilliance and times of complete and utter disaster. The quicker you learn how to become disciplined and push forward consistently the more successful you will become. It’s that simple.

Invest in education

Sales is all about learning as much as you can. Whether you’re learning on the job or from a seminar it’s all beneficial. The earlier in your career you invest in your own education the better. Like most other things, becoming great requires building a solid foundation. Your sales foundation is built upon learning key processes, strategies, advice, and any other helpful tips from those who have succeeded before you.

To get started, it’s always best to identify your best learning style. Some prefer to learn by doing. If that’s’ the case, you should try and pursue as many prospects as possible. Take calls just for practice. Typically, it’s best to only spend your time on qualified leads. That said, if you have the time and you can use the call as a learning experience it’s well worth it.

Every failure is a learning opportunity

This goes along with the message above about investing in your education. This learning experience however, is likely not something you were hoping or expecting to happen. The experience i’m referring to is failure.

Failure is something you need to embrace. Failures big and small will happen all the time throughout your career. That big deal you were hoping to close may fall through right before the papers get signed. The executive promotion you’ve been working towards for the last four years may be given to your colleague instead. You need to become resilient and always use failures as a learning opportunity.

What caused the deal to fall through at the last minute? Was the timing off? Were you talking to the wrong contact and when it came time to sign, the decision maker wasn’t up to speed on the deal? Regardless the reason you should make an effort to learn so you can adjust accordingly next time you’re in a similar situation.

Seek coaching and mentoring

There’s a strange stigma around seeking  outside help. The misconception is that it shows signs of weakness or that you’re unable to accomplish things on your own. That is total garbage. Seeking guidance from sales coaches or mentors shows that you’re proactive around identifying your faults. This also shows you’re able to check your ego.

The biggest benefit of using a sales coach or mentor is that you have the opportunity to be fully transparent with no repercussions. If you tell your boss or manager you aren’t confident that you can meet your quotas, they may just replace you. A mentor will help you identify where you see the faults. Is it a mental block? Do you lack the skills or tools? Are you not familiar with the product or industry? Whatever it may be – their one job is to help you succeed.

Have an objective for every sales call

Prospecting is how you fill your pipeline with leads. Your email outreach is what starts the conversation. And your sales calls are where you bring home the bacon!

After 50 emails, and hundreds of follow ups you finally get your call on the books. Before going into the call you need to clearly identify your objectives. You’re probably thinking that’s a no brainer. Your objective is obviously to close the deal right? While that does hold some truth, it’s not necessarily the strategic way to handle every sales call. Especially the initial ones.

Initial calls are all about listening. By the end of that call you need to know what the deal means for the specific client. For example, let’s say you work sales in a marketing agency. A client comes to you who wants to run a campaign to sell 100 more subscriptions to their service. After a lot of listening and asking questions you soon discover that if they hit their target, they get a promotion at work. This means the deal is personal to that client, which means if your marketing solution can deliver the deal is as good as closed. But notice how you didn’t have to “sell” anything yet to get to that point. To reiterate, your objectives for sales calls aren’t always to go for the close. Sometimes you just want to get key information.

Only sell what you believe in

You’ve probably heard this a million times but I’m going to say it just once more. Selling is very, very, very hard. You’ll have months where you don’t close a single deal. When the times are tough you need to be able to draw that extra motivation from somewhere. That said, it’s extremely important that you only sell what you believe in. Sure the best salespeople can sell ice to an eskimo. That doesn’t mean you should be selling ice if you hate the cold.

Not only will it keep you motivated, but it’ll also show when talking to clients. If you truly believe your products and or services can help the client, it’ll show in conversation by your tone, body language, and overall authenticity.