The Core Sales Skills You Need

Whether you’ve been in sales for years or whether you’re just starting out, mastery of the core skill is by far the most essential part of a successful and prosperous career in selling.  The question is, what are the core sales skills you need?  I mean, do you even know?  How many salespeople do we work with every day who have been doing it for ages that really just don’t know.  And it’s not their fault.  They were taught something in the beginning, locked on to this idea, whatever it was, and it’s sustained them this whole time.  But are they killing it?  Are they operating at 100% of what they’re capable of?  Not with out these core sales skills completely dialed in they’re not.

Look, when a person goes to the gym, they have literally hundreds of choices of exercises they can do.   And most of them are all built on the same few movements.  If one can master the core movements and they’ve also mastered hundreds of smaller exercises.  The good news, sales works the same way.

Here are the core sales skills you need:

• CORE SALES SKILL #1:  Grabbing Attention

Can you get someone interested in your product or service?  The biggest problem a salesperson or sales organization will face is obscurity.  If people don’t know you, they can’t do business with you nor can they benefit from your product or service.  If you just wait for people to show up, you’re missing on on a massive amount of opportunity.  What would your career look like if you knew the exact steps to getting attention, generating your own traffic, getting people interested in you, your company and your product or service?

• CORE SALES SKILL #2:  The Presentation/Pitch 

How to start actually selling.  This is where you identify their needs and present your solution.  There’s only one reason a person buys anything.  Do you know what that is?  Because, once you understand it, what that reason is, you are able to present your product or service in congruence with that one reason and that will put you head and shoulders above your competition.

• CORE SALES SKILL #3:  The Objection 

How to answer everything that will stop the sale.  Most people you work with are going to need your help to make the right decision.  There are only two main reasons people don’t take action and those two reason will always tie back to one very specific thing.  If you know this and understand the formula for handling objections you can then efficiently and effectively help your client through their decision making process.

• CORE SALES SKILL #4:  The Close

Once you know how to move them to act now, you can start to reap the benefits of the first three.  In The Closer’s Survival Guide, we learn that the close is about 20% of the transaction but represents 100% of your money.  Nothing happens until a deal is closed and until your buyer is using and winning with your product or service, you really haven’t helped them.

GUT CHECK:  Do you have these core sales skills?

Even if you do, be honest with yourself, could you improve the core sales skills you already have?  I mean are you ever really done?  Why do police officers have to continually qualify at the range?  Why does your CPR cert expire?  See where we’re going with this?  It takes 24 hours to get rusty.  As a sale professional, if you’re not doing something daily to move yourself and your career forward, there’s only one direction you’re going then.  Backwards.