Having a career in sales can be a very rewarding job although challenging to. You have to be a real go-getter to be successful. There are people known as sales headhunters that look for certain types of characteristics in order to find good sales people. If you want to be noticed by sales headhunters and want a career in sales and marketing, you have to be the type of person that doesn’t stop until they get what they want. This means that you might be irritating to some people or unwelcome. You have to be able to brush off that negativity and move on to the next thing.
Now, granted, there are different types of sales jobs that are available. Sales headhunters are looking for all different kinds of people to do sales jobs, but in the end, they all must be driven and motivated people. Here are some other things that a recruitment agency is going to look out for.
You have to be assertive.
This means that you need to be able to get a sale going without being offensive, frustrating or irritating to the customer. You might be a little annoying but that’s ok, as long as you are still endearing to the customer. For example, instead of leaving the ball in their court by asking, “Would you call me after you’ve made a decision?” or going to the other end of the spectrum, “Buy now or the offer is gone,” you could offer a sort of in between statement such as, “What if you gave me time and date when you’ll know for sure and I can give you a call?” This will show that you aren’t the typical pushy salesman but as the same time you are still in control of the situation.
You need to be self aware.
Being able to identify what you are feeling and understand your emotions makes it easier to build a customer relationship. First you have to identify your emotions, then you have to see how those feelings are going to affect your sale. You might need to compensate for any negative emotions so that they don’t hinder the sale. Lastly, make sure that expand your positive feelings to help you close the sale. For example, you might be frustrated if a client commits a no call, no show to your meeting with them but before heading into your next meeting, you should probably take a minute a calm down.
You should be able to portray empathy.
This is different to sympathy. You don’t need to sit and wallow with your customer but you should be able to be sensitive to when it’s time to listen. It basically entails adapting your behavior to fit with the customer’s current mood. Listen and observe your customer carefully in order to feel what the customer is probably feeling. This means you might have to take a little more time and not rush into business talk immediately. Take a minute to share with your customer and become relate-able to them. This’ll help to depend your relationship with them. From there you’ll need to find a good segue to get back to business talk but make sure it’s sensitive and empathetic to their situation.
You have to be able to problem solve.
Problem solving will help you to think up new and creative ways to meet your customer’s needs. This may be in the financial department as well as the emotion. If the customer is most concerned about your company’s reputation and wants to make sure that they are reliable, then that’s your first step. Don’t try and solve the problem before you really understand what it is. After you can better understand, try and help the customer to see a better solution to their problem. It’s the total opposite from the old fashioned methods of making a sales pitch.
You should be optimistic.
Being negative never buys anyone over. You enthusiasm and optimism is essential in keeping a balance when things to wrong. Don’t assume that because you have a bad first call that you’ll be off your game all day. Be the type of person that gets up and gets back on the horse otherwise sales headhunters will never notice you.