…

Are you a SDR lost in a world of sales quotas? Read this post and figure ways to be successful in sales as you always dreamed to be! We are detailing few unconventional truths top sales representatives use and might never-tell you, perhaps?

Most sales managers in their past have been exemplary sellers themselves. You might be selling 5G phones, while they might have belonged to an era when a basic sim card was something so new! Every sales manager has got to their position where they are through a great work ethic, and they aren't just going to give their best secrets to everyone who walks through the door. Luckily, you can discover crucial sales techniques without having to force it out of your sales leaders.

You are more important than your product!

If it were as easy as telling a potential prospect how great your product is, then everyone would be a successful salesperson. Honestly, your customer already has a dozen of alternatives to choose from, that can offer competetive prices, or better quality than your company might consider offer. A team of engaging sales agents that connect with their clients is what every company is something that's need of the hour in B2B sales.

If a customer likes you, then they'll buy from you. The only way to get their attention is by showing them that you understand their wants and that you're on their side. Any client simply doesn't agree to sign on a dotted line, often pondering deeply over a question of trust. Majority of your customers will do business with you just because they like something about you. So, find out how you can help their business, both in terms of pricing and value.

Perceptions & Prejudices

A great sales training program is necessary to create a strong sales team, but many problems can sneak into your sales process. It's a part of human nature to mirror actions and prior beliefs from an experienced management, but it's wise not to set career-limiting traps by knowingly going blind over process.

Any habit is easily formed, and is most often difficult to stop one's mind from repeating actions that save time and efforts. Several habits are commonly passed down among sales teams, and most common amongst these are negative reinforcements. What's easy to make money without spending more sticks. For instance, a sales manager may advise their SDRs to give up on pursuing a sale under certain rule-of-thumb circumstances.

A skilled manager wins in the gamble of cold-calling by not being the first one to hang up. If a sales manager often asks their agents to quit talking to prospects who sounds rather angry or busy, it perhaps is a very big mistake that may cost a company a lot in potential sales. Habit-forming should be welcome, but if sales agents make assumptions about their prospective customers based on mindsets of their management, its simply is a hard sell.

When a management remarks a certain product/locality being hard to pitch to, based on past convictions and experiences, or could be as harmless advice as being told that a certain lead is a waste of time, don't blindly accept. You may even encounter few sales agents who encourages teams to avoid pitching to large business by telling their agents that it's impossible to outsell current providers.

Perhaps a remedy to such prejudices is to understand that there is no wasted efforts. Although your efforts may not end up creating a sale, you can always make a lasting impression on unqualified leads that could garner positive referrals in future. Frankly, it is impossible to know if a prospective client is a waste of time. Even sales conversations with a difficult client will serve to build  skills of an agent through continued practice of overcoming as many objections as possible. An inexperienced sales representative could outperform their coworkers by tackling groups of prospective leads that their teammates are avoiding due to preconcived perceptions.

Never settle to ball-park!

Constant improvement to your pitch is way to stay ahead in the game. The beginning script that you learned when you got hired is bare minimum amount of leverage you need to be an average sales agent in your field. Someone successful probably designed it, and it gets any job done. That's all it does. You won't be able to surpass your peers by rehashing same old methods that they are all using.

Every sales office has a suggested daily routine for a successful sales career in their field. You may hear  old trope that a sale is made with every few dozen contacts. Door-to-door sales teams will typically have a bare minimum requirement of at least a few dozen contacts made per day. A cold-calling team may encourage their agents to dial more phone numbers every day to meet their sales quotas. This isn't bad advice on its own, but you will see many sales representatives striving to reach those minimum goals as quickly as possible to escape field sales.

Truth be known that any sales professional who feels accomplished from making contacts without closing a sale will be doomed to remain average for rest of their career. Worst thing a sales manager can do is berate their team for failing to meet daily leads quota with complete disregard for  actual productivity of their sales team.

A manager can be blinded by prospect quotas to point that closing sales becomes a secondary goal. If a sales agent spends an hour on each pitch, a successful closing streak makes it impossible to achieve their contact expectations within a given workday. Some pitches may require several follow up calls, or one can take days to end in a sale. Although an agent may be performing exceptionally well, they may still face repercussions from their sales management. It doesn't make logical sense from an outside point of view, but there's a very rational explanation for why disappointments over quotas tends to happen.

Most managers take part in daily goal setting meetings with their boss. They perceive their job as meeting  requirements, and fear of failing to impress their office manager, than being productive. This terrible system of putting such a heavy emphasis on staying unproductively busy can quickly poison overall profitability of a business. Agents will become accustomed to doing bare minimum instead of focusing on closing sales. This can cause sales professionals to never put any extra time and effort into clients. Fear of missing  daily contact goals will be ingrained into their system, and it will discourage them to improve their sales strategies in long term, rather making efforts to look good before management.

Text-book pitches

Close-mindedness is no exception with sales. Think about what average sales analyst goes through every week. They are constantly teaching same principles with every new hire. Continual rehashing of such basic selling guidelines can often make management instituitional. It's easily to term what's doable as risky, and reinforce an unbreakable set of thumb rules in sales management. But, any overly confident sales manager may take no offense to any new ideas, innovations or personal preferences of a creative sales development representative.

It often becomes a punishable offense to stray from script in any way in their presence, and new ideas will be shut down without any merit. Issue with such destructive philosophy is that market is constantly ever changing, and any company will have to continually improve its methods of selling to stay competitive within their target demographics. There are always a better ways to pitch a sale, and there will always be a better techniques. Your skills grow with finding new techniques yourselves, and with consistent effort one is very likely to surpass abilities of average manager with enough dedication on your part.

The biggest downside to being forced into sticking with a textbook-sales pitch is that it can cause monotony. Imagine having someone go out of their way to correct you constantly over a harmless modification to a bad sales script that's outdated. Often, it becomes an unbearable environment for exceptional sales closers. As a team its wise to adhere any personal preferences to modify how scripts are written, and it's an effective sales practice. Some managers require their coworkers to constantly apologize during pitches, and others expect their agents to overwhelm client with more information.

Keep Investing

Investing in quality leads is pretty important than making lots of contacts. Every junior sales representative goes through training process in an almost identical way. You're taught to stick to a very specific script, and you are scolded every time you make a mistake. Your sales trainer might perhaps tell you, the only way to succeed is by knocking a hundred doors or calling over a hundred numbers. That works great for a new sales agent that doesn't have any experience. They are guaranteed to come across someone ready to buy, and it'll be an easy sell based on the large number of contacts they've made every week.

Most companies provide seemingly endless amounts of used leads for no cost to sales agents. But, this creates a type of irrational fear in agents when investing in sales leads. An average live call transfer from a lead generation site can help leads find their ways to top of any sales funnel, and often is a good return on investment. One might have to figure ways by themselves that would need a lot of transfers before landing a single sale. If you are think too much over spending a trifle, it might be very discouraging for any sales who thinking about investing in new leads.

Often, most sales experts don't realize quality of their leads determines real sales closes in any given amount of time. The average sales representative can become top in their teams by simply investing ten percent of their earnings into organic lead generation, instead of relying entirely on paid advertising.

Thanks for reading. Stay motivated, Always!