7 Skills of Elite Sales Professionals - Yours for the Taking
After decades of studying elite sales professionals, and teaching and measuring sales skills to a broad cross-section of sales people, I'd like to pass on to you the 7 ways in which the elite performers assure their success. Use this article to identify and master the skills that you'll require as part of your repertoire if you're to truly gain total control of your earning capacity.
INCREDIBLE RAPPORT
Sales people used to be taught matching and mirroring, but in fact that's just a tiny shred of true rapport. The best sales people build amazing rapport very rapidly, even with people who don't particularly like them initially.
Let's hope the online dating gurus don't ever find out that this highest level of rapport even exists!
It probably wouldn't do much good anyway, because they'd use it to try to manipulate, and manipulation is an automatic rapport breaker. To achieve the results you really want, these rapport skills must be used to enhance your relationships so that your level of connection with people is deep and genuine.
If you'd like to acquire incredible rapport skills you're going to have to practice, but you'll be surprised how quickly they develop, given the right practice! One exercise that you can do is, believe it or not, practiced by synchronised swimming teams each time they perform.
Notice how they not only match their breathing, but they use eye contact to match their internal states? Sounds a bit "woo-woo", I know, but it does work!
MIND READER EXTRAORDINAIRE!
Deep rapport is one thing, but the ability to really know what's going on in your client's mind takes it to another level altogether.
These days you can use cutting edge accelerated learning techniques to move you toward a state of deep competence as quickly as possible, so that you learn to appreciate what your clients are thinking even before they realise it themselves.
How would you like to know the difference between "yes/no", "like/dislike", and "ready/not ready"? Useful?
To gain mind reading skills to this degree of usefulness you'll need to practice with a group of friends or business associates. Have each person think of, for example, things that they like very much, and things that they dislike very much, and see if you can tell the difference. Do this with as many people as you can, and you'll soon be able to pick up much more subtle cues, even with people who are complete strangers to you.
THE *ONLY* PERSONALITY TRAITS THAT MATTER
Although therapists work with several personality traits, most of them don't know THESE! These are the traits that predict how a client will go through the decision making process - the traits that give away the very factors the client needs in order to say yes. Can you see why I say they're essential for you to know? (And they should be essential for therapists too!)
Believe it or not, you have a natural ability to recognise and respond to these traits once you understand what they are. Everyone does. They're incredibly easy to learn!
Take a look at the following trait and you'll see what I mean. This particular trait is called "match/mismatch".
I'm sure you know at least one person who habitually disagrees with anyone and anything. It's not that they're being negative, because if you say something is lousy they'll assert that it's perfectly OK! This is a mismatcher, or "polarity responder" and it's just the way they are. They are always sorting information for "difference".
Just as irritating as a mismatcher is a "similarity responder" who will find a way to agree with everything you say (it doesn't mean they'll follow through on that by the way). They perceive everything as familiar and "same", and find it very difficult to disagree, or cope with things they don't understand. They will fill in the blanks in their imagination, so that it looks just like something they already know.
Real Life Example
Let's say Fred the sales professional is visiting Macy the general manager and Macy seems "disagreeable". First she explains a problem on the manufacturing line, but when Fred repeats her statement later, she denies there is a problem! Macey is such an extreme mismatcher that she even mismatches her own statements. (Christine's note: as hard as it might be to believe, such extreme mismatchers do exist. They're rare, but they do exist!)
Fred, realising that a mismatcher is one of the easiest people to influence (if you can be bothered), merely says, "Macey, I don't know that you'd agree with me that there could be a better way to run that process, but I wonder if you wouldn't find it easier to "
Later he says, "Macey, this new method isn't for everyone and it may not suit you " Macey is the easiest client of all, if you recognise her meta-program and respond to it appropriately! When you understand these personality traits, there's no way you'll make the mistakes that in the past have clashed with your client's "style".
MILLION DOLLAR QUESTIONS
Elite sales professionals use 3 little questions to understand the client's needs on a very deep level.
What these questions do is to take a laser light to the client's core values in relation to the buying process. And in addition, if you're listening, the answers will include the very words the client needs to hear if they're to decide to buy.
There are 2 reasons why these questions can be regarded as "gold". They increase your chances of selling by at least double, and they simultaneously build an incredibly deep level of understanding between you and your client, meaning that it's also more likely that you'll receive terrific referrals from this client far into the future.
PRECISION CONTROL OF YOUR EARNINGS
Can you simply decide how much commissions you'll earn in any given month and have 100% confidence in hitting or exceeding that?
Top sales professionals certainly can and do, because they know the simple statistics that matter to every sales person, and they can turn them into a mathematical equation that literally gives them fingertip control of your income.
Possibly the first person to practise "scientific selling" was Frank Bettger (he wrote "How I Multiplied My Income and Happiness in Selling"). Selling activities may have changed slightly these days, but the science still holds.
You can calculate your own equation by making a list of all your direct and indirect selling activities along with the time it takes to perform "one unit" of each activity. That's what's leading to your current sales level. So you have your equation. However most people can improve that dramatically by eliminating or reducing activities that aren't paying their way, and implementing others that are more effective. In all my years of sales training, I haven't yet met a single sales person on commission who couldn't at least double their income within 90 days of implementation of this method.
For this equation to work for you, you have to be prepared to plan, document, track and analyse each activity or it just won't happen because you'll still be flying blind. However if you do this, then I absolutely know you're going to be successful beyond your dreams.
TAKE OUT YOUR MAGIC WAND AND MAKE THAT FEAR OR DOUBT DISAPPEAR!
Often people absolutely know what to do, have the skills to do it extremely well, and really want to do it, but for some reason they retain some niggling discomfort (or abject fear!) and find that they sabotage their success with inaction. They just can't bring themselves to do it, or do it in a consistent way, in order to get the results they crave.
So what can you do if you know there's no logical reason for you to NOT make those calls, or NOT take up that speaking invitation, but you still perspire madly every time you imagine yourself doing it?
For several years we've had available an incredible technique to eliminate these types of fears and doubts literally overnight (including stuttering, by the way) but very few people have known about it.
It's a technique called "NeuroStim" and it's so effective that it's been tested in clinical trials to eliminate depression and even severe chronic pain in just days. Permanently. It'll make mince meat of your performance anxiety!
NETWORK LIKE THIS AND YOU'LL ENJOY A HUGE PAYOFF!
Up until a few years ago we would always recommend that our students and clients join a business networking organisation and we ourselves worked tirelessly to educate members and their organisations to network more ethically and effectively.
It's a tragedy to us that business networking organisations still don't seem to understand the principles of effective networking.
So these days, to be successful, you need to form your own self-generated networking group in such a way that it MUST provide not only great referrals, but mentoring, advocacy, joint ventures, and the sharing of expertise and resources. All in business hours!
With this strategy you'll save time, money and effort on networking organisations that turn networking into a predatory game. You'll stop wasting time trying to build relationships with people with whom you have nothing in common apart from business. You won't have to put up with (or use) those silly elevator pitches, or tolerate a mass of complete strangers stuffing their business cards at you or treating you like some captive audience to sell to. Most importantly, you won't be robbing yourself and your family and friends of precious family and social time. If you'll only network like this, it will REALLY pay off, personally and professionally.
CAN YOU PUT THIS TOGETHER AND REACH THE TOP?
If you can only do these things, even though there's so much more you can do in terms of skill building, you will certainly join the top echelon of professional sales people in the world today! And you'll deserve it!
Article Source: http://www.search-raven.com
About the Author
The free ebook " Speed Business Networking - The Manual" spells out the detailed principles and methods that deliver effective networking. It's available to people and networking organisations who want to network more ethically and more productively.
This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported License, which means you may freely reprint it, in its entirety, provided you include the author's resource box along with LIVE links (without "nofollow" tags).
by: ChristineSutherland
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