What are the most important skills to teach new sales hires?

Product knowledge doesn't mean just knowing your product as an item or service but more importantly knowing how that product or service will help make the buyer business run smoother, cost effective, and financially a good investment.

?? Communication: Prepare: Practice active listening and persuasive speaking. ?? Client Assessment: Prepare: Learn to understand customer needs. ?? Sales Process: Prepare: Familiarize with each stage of the sales cycle. ?? CRM Skills: Prepare: Train on CRM software usage. ?? Relationship Building: Prepare: Develop customer rapport skills. ?? Emotional Intelligence: Prepare: Enhance empathy and adaptability. ?? Goal Setting: Prepare: Learn effective time management. ?? Data Analysis: Prepare: Skills in interpreting sales data. ?? Resilience: Prepare: Build capacity to handle challenges. ?? Market Knowledge: Prepare: Understand product and market dynamics.

To me marketing knowledge means that I learn all of the above and learn the price should not be a major factor if you have done your job in those principles above. When my customer has a need or a question they want answered and they call and ask for me them I know that I have gone that extra step or two in convincing them that I have the expertise and willingness to take care of them.

In my opinion sometimes the best Sales Process will not help the sales person if they lack the spontaneous, untrainable instinct to react in a positive manner especially when confronted with objections, irritated or confrontational prospects. I would use the example of the college/university graduate who comes out of school perhaps an exemplary student with a degree in one hand and the world supposedly in they other and discovers that human beings do not necessarily fit the pattern discribed in the textbooks.

See the last points. There are a great many skills you can teach someone that will prepare them for sales but there is one undeniable thing that any trainer or teacher cannot teach and that is that some people are just not sales people. to much Pride, temperament, ego, lack of skill, lack of desire are the bedrock of a lose salesperson.

Many communication-based models exist today. Since the late 1980s, we have used a tool called DiSC. It's a simple model, but it offers Salespeople a map for how to engage with prospects in a way they want to communicate. Many prospects want all of the details and specifications of a product, but not all do. Many prospects want to engage in friendly chit-chat and build rapport, but not all do. DiSC offers a useful guide for determining how to approach each person. It can help someone in sales immensely so they don't need to fumble through interactions that don't suit a person's communication style.

Again in my opinion I believe that many sales people fail because of unmet expectations. Either a sales manager thinks that you should take off out of the gate with every cylinder firing and pressures you accordingly or as a sales person you believe you are invincible and suddenly you come face to face with a sales person of another company that is equally talented and trained and knows his product and prospect as well as you do or should.

I worked in Sales and Sales Management for the better part of two decades, and I found that enhancing learning skills was the most important thing for my teams. I found that working with my people on certain behavioral learning benefited them the most. I'd recommend a behavioral learning course like DiSC Sales. DiSC Sales helps sales people quickly identify customer personality types and how to adapt to them. This goes hand in hand with the entire sales process. Knowing how to identify how someone likes to communicate / shop helps with your: -Prospecting & Planning -Approach / Greet -Discovery -Presentation -Close / Follow-up At the end of the day, sales is psychological. So building these skills is crucial.