A valuable skill for all employees, being able to adapt to changes at the work place is a critical soft skill for sales professionals

 

1. Communication

Everyone should try to master communication skills especially sales person because of handling a customer at the store, the opening pitch to a prospect or negotiating a deal – sales professionals are expected to be adaptive at this essential skill. With digital transformation, sales person must be skilled at managing various medium of communication – face2face, telephonic, over mails or live virtual - sales people must adapt their communication appropriately.

2. Persuasion

Convincing people to feel/act in best possible way by presenting effective argument and reasoning is the next essential skill. An insurance agent advising a customer to pick up the best insurance plan shall also earn a commission!

3. Active listening

As it is important to know customer need, a good sale person should listen actively (instead of making assumption, interrupting and rushing the conversation) by focusing and building trust.   

4. Decisiveness

After actively listening and identifying customer’s problem, the good sale person should be able to act decisively and present the right solution or service to close the deal. The difference between a closed deal and a missed opportunity is this ability to act decisively at the right time.

5. Emotional Intelligence

Emotional Intelligence (EI) is one of the vital skills and sales person should be able understand customer’s emotions and intelligently express his emotions to get the desired results.

6. Time Management

A study conducted by Forbes suggested about 35 % of time is spend on selling activities and remaining 65% on other activities. When time management is done effectively, it will result in better selling and greater results

Sales teams will need to continuously work on their technical knowledge and abilities to optimally perform their jobs. But to succeed in their roles, the teams will need soft skills training.