If you’re a business leader, entrepreneur, manager, professional, consultant, customer service associate, or really anyone who is in a position where you are dealing with customers, it is highly likely you will have to flex your sales muscles at some point. This group of “non-salespeople” are fast becoming a secret weapon for today’s savvy companies looking for new channels of incremental growth.  Today we’re going to start a new series of Questions and Answers recorded during the recent ESCRS trade show that took place at the Excel Centre in London. Today’s question asks what key tips should non-salespeople be aware of when selling.

Question:

What are the top sales tips for non-salespeople who have to sell?

Answer:

It is interesting you asked about tips, because I think that a lot of people are somewhat passive learners in that respect, when they walk into a learning experience and they hope to acquire a few tips –  they are thinking you can cherry pick some things that might perform miracles for them… a one size fits all solutions or magic bullets. I very much look at things in a different way.

I hope that people get tips from what I say but much more important to me is that they learn a process; not something that might work here or there, or when one is faced with this particular situation: “oh! remember this top tip”.

Instead I’d rather provide for them a process that works in almost every single environment and  almost every single interaction. That takes a lot more work on my side; to be able to consider the different situations that might occur and then put together a process that might apply to these various situations. But, I believe that that’s the kind of information that works best. That’s the information that sticks with people.

I think a lot of people when they come to training might enjoy the day and walk away with some enthusiasm and hope to change a few things / put these tips into practice, but because these tips are isolated and hard to remember, they put a few into practice here and there but they don’t necessarily do it routinely.

The benefits of those tips erode over the time because they are not used and they don’t apply in many of the situations that you find yourself in day to day reality. So what I prefer is that people come out of my learning experiences with real, clear, actionable processes to put into place from the very next day that they see me and work with me.

Processes that they can use in almost any interaction. Processes that allow for variety in people, in products, in modes of the communication (whether is on the phone or whether it is in person). Processes that they can put into place so that in just doing that process reinforces the memory of that process. And then being able to deliver on that time and time and time again so that it becomes a new way of doing things. And that’s what I am more interested in people learning. And that’s what I think benefits them the most: a process that they can repeatedly exercise and become better at, as opposed to random tips and tricks that may or may not work for a wider variety of circumstances.

—

We hope you’ve enjoyed our Q/A today and look forward to sharing more sales for non-salespeople information over the coming weeks. If you have a question about what it takes for a non-salesperson to succeed at sales, ask in the comments below. We’ll try to help you if we can!