4 COACHING TIPS TO BUILD SELLING SKILLS

ONE- FIRST THINGS FIRST

Know your products/services inside and out, this way you can listen intently to what your customer is saying rather than mentally running through products/services trying to remember details and specifics. 

• Coaching Practice: Learn the in’s and out’s of your products or services by role playing as a sales staff or pair up with a teammate to practice selling to one another. Really put the pressure on each other. Embody the nightmare customer who ask question after question in hunt of every last detail. When you know your products and/or services, you won’t get hung up on the details, which will allow you to listen to your customer and focus on their big picture.   

TWO- INVESTIGATE, INVESTIGATE, INVESTIGATE

Use open-ended questions to learn as much as you can about a prospect. Ask questions to persuade your prospect to elaborate on the “how’s” or “why’s” of the issues at hand. Even if you think you already know the answer, ask anyway this will demonstrate your concern for their industry, subject matter, troubleshoot, etc. as well as your dedication to helping them optimize, evolve, solve, etc. 

• Coaching Practice: Take a self-directed learning approach to practice this skill. Assign a reading of some type, short book, article, trade mag, blog post, etc to be read independently. Request that each employee list three things he or she has learned as well as three follow up questions he or she had as a result of the assigned reading.  

THREE- DON’T SHORT CHANGE YOURSELF

Do not try to solve your customer’s problem before he or she has completed presenting all of the issues. If you jump the gun you may miss important details and present a MIS-solution that will not fit and will not result in a sale. Be patient, listen, and RECAP, after you have given your customer the time and respect to present his or her entire case, restate back to him or her what you have heard as the major issues and important details.

• Coaching Practice: Every sales meeting each sales person will take a turn finding and presenting a case study to the rest of the staff. The entire staff should listen as the case study is presented and then each staff member should take a turn recapping what he or she heard as the main issues and details of the case study without presenting a solution. This activity will help employees to practice listening, and not solving, while customers are talking. 

FOUR- IF I CAN’T SEE IT, THEN I DON’T BELIEVE IT

Eye contact, non-verbal cues and other interactional mannerisms are very important. Be conscious of how you are presenting yourself visually as you interact with your customer/prospects verbally. Make direct eye contact when appropriate, nod your head in agreement when suitable, and use hand gestures and facial expressions to convey compassion and/or emotion in support of their struggles. All of these subtle, visual non-verbal cues can have a big impact on how you are perceived by the prospect or customer. 

• Coaching Practice: Have employees accompany one another on sales meetings or listen in during sales calls for the purpose of observation. After the meeting have the observer review their teammates communicative performance by listing three things he or she did well and three areas that present as an opportunitie of improvement.