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Effective sales are about courage, effort, and skills. Here are 10 points worth noting to increase your sales success.

1. No need – no sale

As salespeople, we would save much time if we adhered to this fact.

For the vast majority of customers, making changes is cumbersome. Most customers prefer to continue as things are now. If the customer doesn’t have a specific challenge or a current goal, they will most likely be unwilling to take the initiative to make changes.

Therefore, solution-oriented sales is essential to establish a dialogue with customers about challenges and goals.

2. Needs and goals affect on multiple levels

Many in the company are affected by a significant challenge. It’s important to understand that challenges manifest differently depending on which level you’re at in the company. For simplicity’s sake, we can call this phenomenon the pain chain.

Take declining sales, for example. A salesperson struggling with sales fears for their job, while the sales manager may be most concerned about terminating the unproductive salesperson.

The CFO worries about the lack of sales if it’s significant enough to impact the company’s bottom line. At the same time, the line manager worries when the poor numbers affect what they have to report to their management.

Pain and worry run like a chain through the company.

The astute reader sees from this reasoning that one should work at the level in the customer’s company where the challenges appear on the radar. A leader will not invest time, effort, or energy in solving a challenge “too small.”

The key is that you need to sell yourself at the right level. In other words, at a level where the perceived challenge is significant enough for them to be willing to invest in solving it.

Knowing how the pain chain runs through the company, who is affected, and how they are affected will help you advance your sales efforts.

3. Don’t try to solve a $10,000 problem with a $100,000 solution

In line with the previous point. You shouldn’t spend time selling a solution that costs more than the benefit of fixing the underlying problem.

Manager presenting for customers
Professional reviewing information on her phone.

4. Believe that you have something valuable to sell

In selling solutions of a certain value, we have yet to see anyone succeed in sales over time without being honest and firmly believing in their solutions. Deep down, believing customers will be better off buying from you is the driving force that should help you through tough times.

Dishonest salespeople may succeed in the short term but will always be caught in their lies eventually.

5. You can’t sell to someone who can’t buy

This obvious statement could save many salespeople an incredible amount of wasted time. Too much sales effort is being put into selling to people who will never buy. A given person often doesn’t have the authority, need, or intention to buy. Therefore, uncovering a genuine need early in the process is essential and time-saving.

6. People buy from people

It’s still the case – even in the business market – that people primarily buy from people. Therefore, the ambitious salesperson should not delegate the completion of proposals to other mechanisms.

Tender processes and digital procurement processes are taking over significant parts of the market in many places. Therefore, it’s even more critical that we in sales are aware of all the situations where there is still a human-to-human sales process.

7. People with power buy from people with power

Power doesn’t necessarily mean power in a formal sense. Many top executives have direct dialogue with salespeople who have power in terms of their industry and professional knowledge, customer and solution insights, and the ability to get things done.

Remember that waste, mistakes, laziness, delays, cowardice, inaccuracy, and lies reduce one’s power and sales strength.

8. You need to understand the customer and have empathy

It’s difficult to help a customer with an important challenge without being able to put yourself in the customer’s shoes. Too many salespeople focus on their products, services, and solutions and forget to put themselves in the customer’s place properly.

9. People make emotional decisions

People make emotional decisions but justify them logically. In sales, we should, therefore, work both emotionally and logically to increase our chances of winning a given sale. We need to make the customer want to buy from us and provide the customer with a good rationale for the decision.

10. People are naturally sceptical of salespeople

Most people don’t like being sold to but love to buy. You should, therefore, create a sale and buying cycle where you lead the process forward but where the customer decides to proceed with their buying process. You just need to ensure the customer can buy from you – instead of being sold to.