Brush Up on Your Business Acumen to Win Sales

Brush Up on Your Business Acumen to Win Sales:from EyesOnSales.com
As a sales executive, you probably enroll your team in training courses that teach them certain skills and technical knowledge related to your product or service solution. You may even train them in business skills like negotiation and business writing. However, you’re probably not teaching them how to ask the right questions. Providing resources that foster greater business acumen will help your sales team learn more about your clients’ businesses, which will lead to more meaningful conversions, happier customers, and greater revenue.
Skills a Good Sales Rep Should Have
 The cliché is true: people do judge a book by its cover. Therefore, first impressions matter when it comes to success as a sales rep. Salespeople can create the foundation for winning a deal in their first meeting with clients if they have the skills to relate to the client’s mindset. In addition, attributes like finesse, emotional intelligence, and common sense are not easy skills to teach, yet these soft skills are essential to success as a sales rep.
Companies teach sales procedures and product and solution features, but many don’t focus on training their sales staff to have intuition, smart business decision-making skills, or strategic vision to understand long-term sales goals. Above all, firms rarely teach reps how to tell clients what success means. This is essential knowledge for sales reps to gain in order to exceed their goals, but it isn’t easily taught over a two-week training session. Ongoing education in the form of books and compressed knowledge should be a part of the staff’s development.
In the early stages of a sale, a good rep aligns your company’s solutions with the client’s vision for success. A sales rep must have a winning attitude, a purpose-driven perspective, and empathy, which is critical for being able to see the world through the eyes of the prospect. The rep must also establish a human connection and present a value proposition tailoring the offering to the client’s needs.
Sales executives can learn more about buyers’ emotions in “Emotional Intelligence” by Daniel Goleman. To explain how salespeople who understand the value of their work outperform quota-driven reps, make your reps familiar with “Selling with Noble Purpose” by Lisa Earle McLeod.
Success in Relationships
Sales reps’ success is based on their ability to develop relationships. It starts with a genuine interest in other people stemming from natural curiosity, and it requires taking the initiative to reach out. You can be at an event with 100 hot leads, but if you don’t actually approach them and engage in a conversation, nothing happens. Sales reps must understand how to make connections with people. They must provide value and become givers in all client relationships.
If you refine your reps’ soft skills in relationship building, you’ll see an exponential increase in your return on investment for all those conferences, lunches, and meetings. “The Fine Art of Small Talk” by Debra Fine will give reps tools and tips on getting past the fear of speaking out in social situations, and “How to Instantly Connect with Anyone” by Leil Lowndes highlights techniques for making conversations memorable.
Overcoming Obstacles
Innovative thinking is also important to successful sales. Overcoming obstacles during the sales cycle can require creative problem solving. Prospects who say your product or service is not their priority right now or that they have no budget available will stop non-creative, non-winner sales reps in their tracks. A creative and engaging sales rep, however, will not view these obstacles as problems at all. A creative sales rep will instead focus on where the money is going and what it is accomplishing to pinpoint what is important to the client.
Here are some examples of how you can leverage knowledge to improve your dialogue with a client on a specific opportunity. Imagine meeting:

• With a retail company focused on client satisfaction. You should read “Delivering Happiness” by Tony Hsieh.
• With a company looking to expand into China. Suggested titles to read beforehand would be “On China” by Henry Kissinger or “Winning in Emerging Markets” by Harvard’s Tarun Khanna and Krishna G. Palepu.
• With a technology company that is launching a new cloud offering. “Management Strategies for the Cloud Revolution” by Charles Babcock is a great book to help you prepare.
• With a banking organization that is struggling to regain its consumers’ trust. Read “The Speed of Trust” by Stephen Covey.

When the sales rep understands the client’s business, pain points, and areas of growth, they will be better prepared to answer tough questions and lead the client to the realization that their company’s product or service is a necessary investment, not just another needless tool or service.
“The Decision Book” by Mikael Krogerus provides exercises for learning to approach and analyze decisions differently, or pick up Roger Martin’s “The Opposable Mind,” which will help you to master the skills of integrative thinking. You can also read “The Right Decision” by James Stein.
Developing a Quality Sales Team
The skill set for success in sales has changed, and buyers are much more sophisticated. To be effective in their role, salespeople need to be great business people; they need to understand how to drive real business results for their clients. As a sales executive, you are teaching your sales representatives to do exactly what their title suggests: represent your company. Training your sales staff about the company’s processes and products will not be enough.
By focusing on gaining business acumen and learning how to ask the right questions, your staff will provide more overall value to the company in leads, relationships, and actual sales. Have your team read “The Challenger Sale” by Matthew Dixon to learn more about how to tailor and customize your sales message to each individual. Brian Tracy’s “No Excuses” offers lessons on using self-discipline in business and in life to achieve your goals.
In addition to looking for people who already have those “un-teachable” personal characteristics, make sure you take the time to read about tips and skills that will assist your reps in the field. Encourage your whole team to read the books that you are most interested in, and change your mood and mindset to reflect the direction you want the company to go. A combination of self-management, a winning mindset, and the ability to learn the client’s goals and values makes for a quality sales rep who has the ability to succeed.