5 Secrets to Record Breaking Sales

The principle mission of the professional salesperson is to gain commitment from customers. Unfortunately for most salespeople, the skills needed to consistently gain commitments that yield record-breaking sales appear to be secrets.

Why is this? Why don’t salespeople know more about the precise skills required to be top-ranking performers?

There are many skills, traits, and qualities that lead to sales success. For example, personality definitely has an impact on performance. The trouble is, you can’t teach personality and salespeople can’t “learn” it! What’s more, little information is available about the exact role personality plays in sales success. How about motivation? We’ve all seen salespeople who have worked very hard and made a great number of sales calls. Yet in the same sales force, there always seems to be a few salespeople who make far fewer calls and land a lot more business. Sure, hard work is part of the formula, but sales success has more to do with the quality of work and quality is all about skills.

What We Know About Selling Skills

Since 1990, The Sales Board has been measuring the selling skills of salespeople. More than 300,000 salespeople from over 2,500 companies have been benchmarked on their knowledge and practice of the key skills required for effectively gaining commitment from customers. Then, following Action Selling sales training conducted by The Sales Board, the same skills are measured again using The Sales Board’s validated Selling Skills Assessment instrument. (http://www.thesalesboard.com/sales-skill-assessment.asp) This proven instrument measures each salesperson’s knowledge of selling skills, as well as the ability to apply those key skills in their daily work environment. When salespeople achieve a predetermined competency level at each skill, they become Action Selling Certified.

Changes in sales revenue and margin performance before and after Certification have been measured thousands of times. What is revealed is the true impact of knowledge and application gains within each key selling skill category. With all skills combined, Certified salespeople improve their revenue and margin performance at 6 times the rate of non-Certified salespeople.

That’s how we know for sure that the key skills identified, taught, and drilled in Action Selling training produce higher sales revenue and better margin performance.

Skill Measurement Reveals Selling Errors

Prior to Action Selling sales training, most “professional” salespeople demonstrate a number of selling errors that ought to be scandalous. Yet until the Skills Assessment reveals selling skill inadequacies (listed below) and measures the impact of these errors, the mistakes go completely unnoticed. Yes, without measurement, the secrets to record breaking sales are never revealed!

Selling Errors:

- 82% of salespeople fail to differentiate. Their products, their company and they, themselves appear to be no different from their competitors.

- 99% of salespeople set the wrong sales-call objectives. Poor call planning prevents salespeople from consistently moving the buying process forward.

- 86% of salespeople ask the wrong questions. The consequences include call resistance, inability to deal with objections, and missed buying opportunities.

- 95% of salespeople talk too much. When they talk too much they listen too little. Today, nobody wants to hear a data dump.

- 62% of salespeople fail to ask for commitment. Since their principle mission is to gain commitment, they appear only to be impersonating salespeople.

The Five Selling Skills - Secrets to Record Breaking Sales

Bearing the above in mind, exactly what skills are most critical to improving sales performance? That is to say, what skills represent solutions to the noticed and unnoticed errors salespeople make? To find out the exact skills that produce record breaking sales, please visit our web site, download and read the rest of the White Paper: 5 Secrets To Record Breaking Sales at http://www.thesalesboard.com/wp_download.asp