Personal Sales Skills by Richard Boyd

Personal Sales Skills by Richard Boyd

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Personal Selling Skills Part 1.

How bad are yours?

My personal sales skills suck. Last week, I managed to blow two contracts worth nearly £4K, no one else, it was me. We’d beaten the competition; both enquiries should have been a formality.

One enquiry was from a swimming pool manufacturer wanting an interactive multimedia CD, as part of a large mail out and the other was a printing company wanting to completely revamp their web site.

And my sales skills blow it.

Why? Because I haven’t even thought about selling for over 5 years. The calls came in, I took both of them and I made the following mistakes:

• I was engrossed in a different client’s problem

• I was barely listening to what they said, within seconds I knew what they needed, so I switched off

• I even forgot one of the callers first names, I was so preoccupied

• I was reading some data on a PC monitor whilst I was on the phone

• I told them what they needed, rather than listen and explain what the options and subsequent benefits would be

I suck, big time. In 5 years I have become so engrossed in the ins and out of my profession that I have forgotten what selling is all about.

I have forgotten the golden rule.

“People buy what things can do for them -- they don’t buy a web site or some multimedia product, they buy what it will do for them.”

How is this going to help you in your next job interview? Remember the golden rule.

“People aren’t interested in you, they are interested in what you will do for them, if they employ you”.
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