Know your product

 You have to fully understand the product you’re selling—how it works, why your customers need it and how your product is superior to those of your competitors. Demonstrate this expertise and highlight each product’s strongest features.

Focus on strategic prospecting skills

 While cold-calling reps must rely on their presentation skills and multifaceted marketing techniques, it’s often more efficient to search for referrals through existing connections and discovering new prospects that fit your ideal customer profile. It never hurts to try to revive lost opportunities nor ask current clients for referrals. 

Build rapport

 Ask good, open-ended questions and customize each interaction to fit the personality and background of your clients. You can chat about sports, attending the same college, travel, weather, anything to establish trust with the buyer. Be an active listener to find out what the buyer wants, but also tell compelling stories to keep them engaged. And though it’s encouraged and sometimes necessary to socialize with target buyers, a good sales rep can sell over the phone and not just rely on a face-to-face interaction.

Time management

 You should tie all of your daily activities to achieving your quota. Pre-call research is important—to get to know personal details about the client, the industry and business size—but too much research might limit your call volume. Use your company’s sales technology to efficiently sort through leads and study analytics. Prioritize the most promising leads and don’t waste time with ones that aren’t going anywhere. 

Objection prevention and handling

 Great sales reps can think ahead and study what typical objections are for every product. A great sales rep will never hear “I don’t need this” because he’s already convinced them they do!

And since no rep can possibly plan for every objection, you have to be prepared to empathize with concerns and ask genuine questions to gather more information. Then, offer clear, reassuring responses and you can overcome the objection.

Closing techniques

To gain commitment and start the closing process, you need to make sure the right people with the right approval power are brought into the process at the appropriate times. Once you get the commitment, push the customer to sign the order fast. If they hesitate or want to push back the sale, suggest a deadline when they’ll want to have that product in place.

Finally, it’s important to nurture the relationship after you make the sale and manage the client’s pipeline of orders like a portfolio. Respond to their needs and concerns with immediacy and persistence.

For more tips on how to develop great sales skills or advance your career, contact our staffing professionals today.

The post The Top Skills Every Sales Rep Should Have appeared first on CulverCareers.

Below are four alternative types of interviewing techniques. Not only will these methods help you vet your employees more effectively, but you’ll also excite your potential hires with your creative, more contemporary style, thereby attracting the most talented candidates.

Behavioral interviews

Behavioral interviews allow the candidate to demonstrate his skills and experience but also reveal particular characteristics that you might deem necessary for their role at your company. Start with small talk until the candidate seems relaxed, then start to ask questions about their past behaviors that hint at the attributes you’re looking for.

Ask what they’ve done in the past in scenarios similar to those they’re likely to experience at your company. For example, how have they handled customer complaints? Or how have they handled starting a project completely from scratch? Have they ever innovated an entirely new procedure and if so, how? If they reveal a history of demonstrating the traits you’re searching for, these might be your future employees!

Unusual questions

Since candidates have probably prepared answers to the more traditional questions, generate a list of unexpected ones to see how they respond. There might not be a right or wrong answer, but you can gain some good insight into their thought processes and observe how they think on their feet.

You might ask what type of car they’d be, which super hero they most identify with, or what the title of their biography might be. Do they demonstrate poise and creativity in these unrehearsed, unguarded moments or do they panic and stumble?

Problem-solving tasks and brainteasers

Similarly, some companies like to present challenging problems to get a feel for how potential hires use their imagination and problem-solving skills under pressure. Sometimes these are brainteasers, such as “how many golf balls fit into a 747?” and other times they’re real life problems that your company has experienced in the past and would expect this candidate to tackle if hired. Weed out the people who can’t identify the challenges and opportunities in each scenario and who don’t demonstrate their ability to be innovative and forward thinking.

Vetting social media profiles

It’s already pretty common to check out candidates’ social media pages before you decide to bring them in for an interview. The next step is to inquire about those details, particularly if there’s a discrepancy between something they present on their resumes and something you see online. Check on anything you’re hesitant about to see how they react to surprise questions.

For more methods to lock down exceptional hires to power your business, check out our website at https://culvercareers.com.

The post Do You Know About These Modern Interview Techniques? appeared first on CulverCareers.