Developing Basic Sales and Marketing Skills
By Valentine Okolo
Delivering continued customer satisfaction through value adding sales and marketing is essential to ensure that customers remain loyal to the product/service they enjoy. Customers care about their own satisfaction than they do about the success or failure of the company you represent. As such, to be successful in selling, the product or service you wish to sell must be able to satisfy the customer. Good selling involves providing the right product and services to your customers thereby creating customer satisfaction and value. Your ability to fulfill your customers need will determine your level of success in selling or marketing. Effective marketing and selling skills are not acquired by accident, they are acquired through practice and what you practice is acquired through knowledge. You must understand that the right marketing skills are not developed through random selling. Having an effective selling strategy helps you to logically craft how to identify and manage the whole sales process and you must understand that being a good salesman starts with you.
As a general rule, you should try to create interest first in what you intend to sell. If you don't believe in what company does, why work for them? If you don't believe in a product/service, why sell it? Note that if you don't believe in yourself, nobody will. There's nothing more embarrassing than a salesman who lacks product knowledge.
Secondly, you need to develop your personal standards. Being known to exhibit excellence creates trust, dependability, responsibility and integrity for you in the market place. The word standard means a level of excellence required or specified. The drive to always achieve excellence should form a part of your character. To maintain high personal standards, you need to make quality decisions based on moral strength and principles. These areas of standards include growth, honesty, integrity, relationship, energy and action. Of all these standards I would like to talk a little bit about integrity for the purpose of this article. This is because integrity is arguably one of the most important personal, professional or ethical standards a professional marketer or salesman should have. The word integrity in itself stands for moral excellence, wholeness and in many ways honesty. Customers trust you when they know you maintain a high sense of integrity in selling. This means that you will always treat customer sales or marketing transactions transparently, exclude moral excellence in all sales or marketing deals, keep to commitment and accept full responsibility for your actions. A salesman of integrity gains customers' trust over time and when you develop trust you gain loyalty and respect.
Thirdly you will have to ensure your customer communication skills are excellent. Good communication skills is a must earn to provide excellent sales and marketing. This involves listening, asking questions, being courteous, communicating clearly and accurately, minding your customers feelings, proper use of non-verbal language, skills in handling problem customers, use of technical knowledge and concepts, handling customer objections and questions and keeping your customers informed at all times. I like to talk about listening a lot because this most times forms the bedrock for proper communication between salesmen/marketers and customers. As a great salesman, you should know when to stop talking and listen to your customers. Listening involves hearing and should be demonstrated even in your body language. You won't be able to serve your customers' needs in selling, if you do not stop talking long enough to understand what they are saying. Ask questions to clarify points and take important notes to ensure you remember all the important points of the conversation.
Having developed effective customer communication skills, you will then need to work on your marketing strategies. Having an effective marketing strategy helps you to logically craft how to identify, create and manage the whole sales and marketing process. Your marketing and sales strategy will involve how to develop multiple outreach sources, identifying and creating product need, handling the actual sales and marketing process, handling customer objections during the sales and marketing process as well as closing your sales in a grand style.
Your clients should be able to understand how you can create benefit or value for them. Good selling is value selling. When a product purchased or service rendered exceeds customer expectations, value is received and customer satisfaction is guaranteed. In selling, always pinpoint the benefits derivable from a product to ensure the customer constantly enjoys this benefit. What you intend to offer should fulfill a desired need and ultimately create satisfaction. Customers buy satisfaction. If you do not provide satisfaction in the long run, then you have not made a great sale. Creating customer satisfaction is key to customer retention. Provide evidence to back your claims and avoid overwhelming the client with too much sales information. Researching the market is key to business development as well. This will enable you identify your target clients beforehand. This means that you will need to identify where and who your primary market really is. You also need to identify your niche market and strategies to win your niche market as well. You will also need to have some basic knowledge on business development.
Business development is the process by which new business is introduced. A good salesman should be skilled in the act of developing new business as well as expanding already existing ones. In order to develop new business effectively, you must understand that it involves researching the market, identifying key targets, constructing an outreach plan which was earlier discussed, securing meetings, creating proposals and following up on leads.
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