Digital Selling Skills For Modern Sales Professionals

The modern business world has modern sellers. For every modern seller is a digitally savvy sales professional. Digital skills are non-negotiable in the modern business environment; digital selling skills are a necessity to maintain a competitive edge in our digitally driven sales environment.

Great sales reps are turning to digital media and technology to help them sell their products and services. Investing in digital skills as a sales professional matters more now than ever. They are taking advantage of what is available to them in order to provide a better customer buying experience.

Customers are significantly more informed which has leveled the playing field in terms of how they decide to buy. Luckily, the age of digital technology has allotted the modern sales professional to leverage new tactics and strategies for better negotiations and customer engagement.

It’s not enough to have a friendly disposition and winning smile in sales. If you want to be successful, you need to learn how to sell in a digital world. To sell in an ever-changing, competitive and fast-paced digital world, you need to fully understand some key concepts. How to be a salesperson and how to sell digitally are two of the concepts that must be understood.

 

Be a Lifetime Student And Strive To Learn New Skills

It’s not enough to learn the basics and never have any other education or formal training. You must evolve and learn as quickly as technology does, which can be tough for some. You must be ambitious and want to learn, but you also have to know how to sell and generate leads. Qualities that successful salespeople have include problem-solving skills, tenacity, technical understanding, and more. Plus, they must be prepared.

Related Reading: How Successful Salespeople Grow

 

Utilize Social Media For Improved Branding and Customer Engagement

Nurture relationships with customers and potential prospects by making use of relevant social media platforms. Social media can be used to promote products or services, remind customers of special events, or provide compelling multimedia content that followers and potential customers can view to stay updated with your organization’s brand. Social media platforms are a great way to create these long-lasting connections with clients.

 

Be, Do, and Have

You’ve heard the age-old saying that some people are natural-born salespeople or can sell water to a drowning person. These jokes have been around for decades because some people just have a knack. While it’s helpful to already have the persuasive skills intact, it’s not enough for digital selling. You have to be a salesperson and do what they do, but you need the skills to do it, as well. The best advice is to know yourself thoroughly to determine if selling is the right career choice for you.

 

Discover Valuable Consumer Insights With Data and Analytic Software

Sales professionals keep track of a large amount of data. From organizing leads, making use of notes, phone numbers, and other valuable bits of data, sales professionals must juggle huge quantities of valuable customer insights that could get lost in the clutter of information.

Becoming proficient with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is an indispensable digital selling skill that the modern sales professional can utilize to track important customer data such as phone call interaction, organize emails, presentations, and dashboard-based analytics.

 

Related Reading: A Three-Step Process To Digitally Transform Your Sales Team

The sales industry is filled with people who never reach their true potential. Doug Dvorak discusses how sales professionals can take their sales game to the next level.

Successful sales professionals sometimes lose sight of the fact that there is always room for improvement. Those sales professionals who take the extra step and push themselves to the limit are known as the top 1 percent – they have found smart ways to succeed in sales by creatively thinking outside of the box and working hard.

Top performers in the sales industry aren’t just the ones bringing in the most revenue for their businesses; they are the ones setting the standards for everybody else. These top sales professionals are always hungry for more opportunities to succeed.

To reach the top of the ladder, sales professionals must embrace the idea of becoming trendsetters. Success is a lifestyle, not a destination, and if you follow the footsteps of others, you can reach a certain level of success; however, in this competitive business world it takes more than that to reach the highest level and following the safe path will not always take you to the top of the game.

Trends in business are always changing and the ones who are willing to innovate and adapt to the ever-changing landscape of business will separate themselves from the pack.

To find out how your business can set trends instead of following them, here are some smart ways to succeed in today’s complex and competitive world.

Make Time for Creativity

It’s hard to be creative when you don’t make enough time for yourself to let the good ideas flow. Be patient with the process and learn to play around with new ways of doing things. Don’t judge yourself too hard when you are brainstorming new ideas; trendsetters in business are willing to think outside of the box and patient enough to let new ideas grow.

The right work ethic and the willingness to explore new ways to tackle a problem will set you apart from the rest.

Study the Current Trends

You need to know the rules in order to break them. Learn what trends dominate the market and think of new ideas to change the way things are done – read about the latest jewelry industry news, styles and trends; learn as much as possible from the success and failures of competitors; attend webinars and conventions.

Trendsetters are always two steps ahead of the competition because they stay informed and can anticipate critical moves they need to make to stay in the game. Success in today’s demanding sales environment requires a thorough understanding of buying trends. There are countless resources to help businesses gather valuable insights regarding consumer behavior, buying psychology, and current technological trends that can assist sales professionals to develop winning, creative selling strategies.

Learn How Customers Think

 

Listen to your customer base and understand what works and what doesn’t. Knowing this will help you generate new ideas. Figure out what they need and capitalize on it. Understand what customers are saying and have an honest dialogue with what they have to say about your store. According to SalesForce.com,

[quote align=”center” color=”#999999″]It benefit’s sales coaching professionals and sales professionals to learn how their customers think, learn & buy. Learning from customers will help you to innovate and think clearly about what really needs to get done to improve their business and your own business.[/quote]

Learning from customers will help you to innovate and think clearly about what really needs to get done to improve their business and your own business.

Establish Your Brand

Separate yourself from competitors by learning how to brand your jewelry store effectively and often. Incorporate your brand into every facet of your business so that customers learn to recognize you. Learn your strengths and emphasize them. Establish a good reputation with your customers by developing valuable content. Quality content will communicate your organization’s unique characteristics that will help your brand stand out. Valuable content is not an advertisement; valuable content helps to solve a problem, answer a question or address an issue for the reader.

Build a Great Team

Strive to build a strong foundation by hiring innovative people who will go to bat when needed. Treat your team with respect and motivate them to keep up with new ideas. Inspire your team by holding brainstorming sessions where they can bounce ideas off each other and benefit from open lines of communication. You’re only as strong as your weakest link so it’s important that everyone is on the same page and running like clockwork. Learn to do more with your sales team.

Succeeding in sales today requires that you think outside the box, work like hell and call on a large pool of ideas for inspiration. Salespeople need to be creative, suit up and show up on time every day.

The top 1 percent of professionals forge their own path by exploring new ways to innovate and expand. Learn to stay motivated and hungry by executing goals in a timely and professional manner.

8 Traits of a Successful Sales Person

Selling can be difficult but developing certain traits can help you improve your sales process and your sales style.

Technology has evolved so significantly in the last 25 years that most people can’t keep up. Keeping up is exactly what you need to ensure you are doing. Companies everywhere focus on digital transformation because it impacts how they make sales. Your sales team must understand the digital process before they can sell products and services. Otherwise, you are bound to lose customers because they want things done differently, more now than ever before. The goal of digital transformation is to connect you with your customers and use a variety of technologies to do so. The three-step process is simple and effective, but you have to ensure that you help your sales team fully understand it and how it can work for them.

 

The Right Tools

 

The first step to your sales team becoming digital is giving them the tools they require to be part of the digital age. Almost everyone has cell phones, tablets, and other electronic devices, but you need to ensure that they have one just for company purposes. You may not give every salesperson the ability to scope leads online, but you should have a team (or a few people) devoted to it. They can utilize social media, cloud-based CRM and mobile technology to present your company digitally. Having a great website that is not mobile-friendly is a big mistake today with more than half of the internet being accessed via mobile devices. Keeping up with simple, but extremely important technology updates like this can give your sales team the advantage when push comes to shove.

Appropriate Training

There are specific tools required so that salespeople can transform digitally, but they also need the right training. While they probably know how to operate a cell phone and use it on social media, they may not understand the nuances of selling online. You may also have to invest in a digital sales course to help teach them what social media channels they can use and how to use them to better reach their customers and prospects. Or you might need to teach them the new CRM system and help them understand the changes they soon face. Helping your sales force keep up with technology through training is key to ensuring your sales force is not falling behind.

Automation

The digital transformation of your sales team can’t be complete without automation. Making appointments, creating invoices, and sending emails take up time that your employees don’t have. If you want them to be successful and more productive, automate some of these mundane tasks so that your sales force can focus on what they are good at, getting more leads and sales! By automating some of their workloads through the use of simple automation tools you are improving efficiency.

In the End, You Win!

Staying abreast of these three steps year after year is no easy task. You may need to hire a few people along the way in order to really take advantage of all of the new technologies that emerge in the coming years. If you are able to stay ahead of the technology curve, your company will outsell your competition. The use of technology is a continuous growing culture that should be utilized in your sales company. Word of mouth will spread that your company is doing cutting-edge work and the investment will be a small price to pay compared to your returns. Purchasing from a company that is technically savvy is much easier and often more exciting than purchasing from a company that is falling behind. Don’t be the company that is falling behind!

 

Related Article: 5 Innovative Strategies to Drive More Revenue