Why the ‘gift of the gab’ doesn’t matter in sales

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What sort of person do you want to employ in a sales role? In this Vlog, Grant explains how the skills of a ‘typical’ salesperson have now changed

What sort of person do you want to employ in a sales role?

Traditionally we look for someone with the ‘gift of the gab’ who could knock on doors, make cold calls, make things happen, create opportunities, but do we really want that person today?

We live in a world where 94 percent of purchase journeys start online and customers are taking themselves over halfway through the purchase before they ever get in touch with your company. Salespeople have always had to be where the customers and prospects are, and today that’s increasingly on the worldwide web.

Today, we need salespeople that can build their reputation online. We need salespeople that can spot opportunities using things like social media monitoring software, that can create relationships using inmails on LinkedIn, develop the use of email or even WhatsApp messaging. We need salespeople that can build credibility for both themselves and the company remotely.

This is quite a different set of skills from ones that we traditionally employed salespeople for. Of course, we still need salespeople that can get on with others, that can present in meetings, that can great good impressions. But actually a salesperson would often have to create an amazing impression from cold, where as today they would have built a reputation for themselves online before they ever get in front of that prospect.

Does your sales person come across well on a video call? Can they write well and not just speak well? These are the sorts of questions you need to ask today.

Of course, in many business to business environments, we still require salespeople. Many companies are still selling solutions that need face to face interaction and personal interaction before they’re going to be purchased. But the profile of those salespeople and what we need them to possess, qualities and characteristics, are fundamentally changing.

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      Hi Virginia, I am glad that you found the vlog interesting.

      The question you ask, regarding increasing responses to LinkedIn InMail, is a good one.

      I am not sure I can do it justice within the confines of this forum. However, three tips:

      1. Make sure that your segmentation and targeting is spot on – in so doing you will be highly relevant for the people whom you are approaching

      2. Make your message about them not you – ‘the customer is the hero’ – what are their problems, concerns, ambitions, hopes and goals?

      3. What’s in it for them? What value do they obtain – not from the offer – but from the message itself?

      I hope that is useful.

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