8 Skills Required For A Career In Sales

Like every other career, a successful career in sales requires you to develop certain key skills. No matter the role, there are certain traits that you must possess to get ahead in your career. Also, as you start progressing in your career, some skills will become more important than others. In this article, we will discuss the skills in sales that will take you far in your sales career.

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Communication

This is perhaps the most crucial sales skill that anyone who wants a career in sales should possess. On the surface, this means that you should be able to initiate and hold conversations with your partners as well as customers. This is important because you need to convince others to give your products a chance.

However, it is not all about mindless persuasion. In fact, communication is a sales skill that requires you to be a much better listener than speaker to be successful in sales. There are many reasons for that. For one, people don’t open up instantly to someone else, especially if that person is a business associate (and might have vested interests in everything). Secondly, people send cues not only through their words, but also through their body language. It is your job as a salesperson to pick up those cues and make sure you are always aware of the market needs and trends.

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Time Management

Managing time is a sales skill that is more important for those just starting out in their careers. Our days tend to be unstructured, which means that we have to learn to set our own schedule, organise our tasks, and prioritise our activities. Without this, we can find ourselves getting constantly overwhelmed, without accomplishing much during the day.

Motivation

Staying motivated is another sales skill that is required to have a successful career in sales and it comes in many forms. You need to be someone who can take initiative and come up with ideas on your own. While you will have deliverables and objectives, it is up to you to determine the path you will take to achieve them. With time, you will come up with methods and develop different selling skills that work for you. You will also need to be self-motivated at all times. Many deals take time to close, and the sales funnel for them can be longer than expected. If you don’t stay motivated, you will lose enthusiasm for the project, which will reflect on your sales skills and your interactions with partners. Also, as you take on more responsibilities, you need to be comfortable working independently on certain accounts from time to time.

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Collaboration

The success of any sales team depends on how well the members are able to collaborate with each other. It is important to remember that everyone on your team, from the sales promoters to the sales director, is the face of your brand for customers and partners alike. Even if you work on different accounts, it helps to share market-related information with each other at all times.

Not only that, but you also need to collaborate with other functions such as operations, finance, product marketing, and customer service which will improve your skills in sales. Most functions tend to work in solos, not communicating with each other regarding important updates or challenges, which ends up hurting the organisation as a whole. The thing to remember is, no individual succeeds unless they are a team player. Therefore, collaboration and teamwork becomes one of the essential sales skills.

The success of any sales team depends on how well the members are able to collaborate with each other.

Flexibility

One of the key skills in sales is flexibility of a salesperson. There are few careers as dynamic as sales. You might find yourself juggling with many accounts at the same time or essaying different roles within the same account. Each client is different, and the demands made on your time and energy might get to you if you aren’t flexible and agile.

Lifelong Learning

This is true of any career, but a career in sales especially requires you to not only work on your selling skills, but also to challenge yourself throughout your career. You should possess updated product knowledge, knowledge about your competition, and that required to use the different tools available to you. Sometimes there is too much information and not enough insight, and that is where your analytical skills, paired with a healthy dose of curiosity and sales skills, will come in handy.

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Negotiation

Many of our interactions with others become zero-sum games. In other words, we feel that in order to benefit from a transaction, the other person needs to lose out on something. However, we cannot be successful businesspersons if we think this way. Negotiation is an art form that helps us have meaningful discussions with our partners. It helps us create the elusive “win-win situations.” A powerful negotiator possessing sales skills is both an asset to his team and a blessing to his clients. This can help them develop long-lasting, mutually beneficial relationships.

Leadership

A career in sales requires great leadership and sales skills. You need to be able to lead by example, motivate any sales promoters and executives under you, and make sure your team trusts you at all times. Field sales can be very challenging and demanding, not to mention that each day might not end in successful conversions. Your team should have faith in you so that they can come to you with their issues and know that you have their back at all times.

It is absolutely fine if you don’t have these skills in sales starting out, you can always learn them on the job as long as you’re willing and open to always keep learning.

Aishwarya is a marketer and writer. As a marketer, she has a keen interest in creating meaningful conversations. As a writer, she loves pushing the boundaries of storytelling.