Qualities of a Successful Sales person with reference to B-2-C, B-2-B Marketing?

 Qualities of a Successful Sales person with reference to B-2-C, B-2-B Marketing

1. They are persistent. Selling or running a business for a living requires a tremendous amount of persistence. Obstacles loom in front of us on a regular basis. But it’s what you do when faced with these barriers that will determine your level of success. I believe it was Brian Tracy who once said that a person will face the most challenging obstacle just before they achieve their goal. The most successful people in any industry have learned to face the obstacles that get in their way. They look for new solutions. They are tenacious. They refuse to give up.
2. Successful sales people are avid goal setters. They know what they want to accomplish and they plan their approach. They make sure their goals are specific, motivational, achievable yet challenging, relevant to their personal situation, and time-framed. They visualize their target, determine how they will achieve their goal, and take action on a daily basis.
3. Great sales people ask quality questions. The best sales people ask their clients and prospects plenty of quality questions to fully determine their situation and buying needs. They know that the most effective way to present their product or service is to uncover their customer's goals, objectives, concerns and hesitations. This allows them to effectively discuss the features and benefits of their product and service that most relate to each customer.
4. Successful sales people listen. Most sales people will ask a question then give their customer the answer, or continue to talk afterwards instead of waiting for their response. Great sales people know that customers will tell them everything they need to know if given the right opportunity. They ask questions and listen carefully to the responses, often taking notes and summarizing their understanding of the customers' comments. They have learned that silence is golden.

5. Successful sales people are passionate. They love their company and they exude this pride when talking about their products and services. The more passionate you are about your career, the greater the chance you will succeed. The reason for this is simple—when you love what you do you are going to put more effort into your work. When you are passionate about the products or services you sell, your enthusiasm will shine brightly in every conversation. If you aren’t genuinely excited about selling your particular product or service, give serious consideration to making a change. You are not doing yourself, your company or your customers any favors by continuing to represent something you can’t get excited about.

6. Successful sales people are enthusiastic. They are always in a positive mood - even during difficult times - and their enthusiasm is contagious. They seldom talk poorly of the company or the business. When faced with unpleasant or negative situations, they choose to focus on the positive elements instead of allowing themselves to be dragged down.
7. Successful sales people take responsibility for their results. They do not blame internal problems, the economy, tough competitors, or anything else if they fail to meet their sales quotas. They know that their actions alone will determine their results and they do what is necessary.
8. Successful sales people work hard.Most people want to be successful but they aren’t prepared to work hard to achieve it. Sales superstars don’ t wait for business to come to them; they go after it. They usually start work earlier than their coworkers and stay later than everyone else. They make more calls, prospect more consistently, talk to more people, and give more sales presentations than their coworkers.
9. Successful sales people keep in touch with their clients. They know that constant contact helps keep clients so they use a variety of approaches to accomplish this. They send thank-you, birthday, and anniversary cards. They make phone calls and schedule regular ‘keep in touch’ breakfast and lunch meetings. They send articles of value to their customers and send an email newsletter. They are constantly on the lookout for new and creative ways to keep their name in their customers’ minds.
10. Successful sales people show value. Today’s business world is more competitive than ever before and most sales people think that price is the only motivating buying factor. Successful sales people recognize that price is a factor in every sale but it is seldom the primary reason someone chooses a particular product or supplier. They know that a well-informed buyer will usually base much of her decision on the value proposition presented by the sales person. They know how to create this value with each customer, prospect, or buyer they encounter.
We all have what it takes to become successful. Are you ready to make it happen?

8 Key Strategies to Becoming a B2B Salesperson of the Future

1. Know Your Customer

Good news–this tenet has not changed. The even better news is that it’s easier than ever to achieve this. In the online arena, there has been a dramatic increase in the amount and quality of information that’s available to you about your B2B customer. Simply use your web resources to research the customer: what information is public? Have there been any important leadership changes in the company? You also need to understand the digital body language of your contacts. What information have they been accessing on your website? What topics are they searching for? Which subjects are they interested in based on the emails they open? You must tailor your responses to them. As one of my customers told me, by using digital body language, the sales team suddenly felt like someone “turned the lights on”. Now, that team is selling with full visibility.

2. Utilize Your Resources to Drive Revenue

Sales and marketing are now a team sport. It’s time to play nicely! Treat your marketing colleagues to a coffee or lunch. Learn what’s important to them, and also share what’s important to you. Determine a common set of objectives so that the sales, marketing, and revenue departments can all work together as one cohesive unit in the name of success. Alignment is absolutely key here. You must agree on definitions (such as what determines a lead, MQL, SQL, and so on) and what your lead handoff processes look like.
3. Prioritize, Prioritize, and Prioritize Some More
You have the information, but you need to know where to spend your time. Find the prospects in your sweet spot that are indicating a strong interest in what you are doing. By scoring your leads from demographic and behavioral perspectives, you can focus your time on the most sales-ready leads. If your marketing team is using a marketing automation tool that syncs with your CRM, your marketing team can pass critical lead information to you, making it easier to know who is ready to buy.

4. Don’t be Afraid to Recycle

And I don’t mean paper and plastic (but even with this, I highly encourage you to do so!) The focus is on lead recycling, which is defined as the process of passing a lead from sales back to marketing because the lead was not yet ready to commit. Simply stated: don’t waste your valuable time on leads who are not ready to buy. If you are working with leads that are not able to complete the transaction for whatever reason, then it is a good idea to recycle them. Don’t worry—the marketing machine will keep them warm with lead nurturing, and your time is freed up to work with customers who are ready to move forward.

5. Be Responsive, at Scale

The technology exists today to allow you to respond at scale. Work with your marketing teams to think through the customer’s buying journey and automatically respond with information that the customer is likely to want based upon their behavior. By listening and responding on multiple channels at scale, the customer will recognize that you are there to support them as their concierge sales person. That user experience in itself will differentiate you from the competition.

6. Be Creative

Try alternate approaches; whether it’s different subject lines, different ways to respond to various behaviors, different calls-to-action, or different assets. Test, measure, and share the results with your colleagues so that you all can learn, improve, and be on the same page. And don’t be afraid to test responding and interacting with prospects on multiple channels! Build out your social profiles and embrace social selling.

7. Be Genuine

In all your customer engagements, maintain your unique voice and be straightforward. At the end of the day, customers will appreciate your directness and your human touch. This will be another way to set you a part from the competition. Even if you are communicating mostly online, don’t underestimate the power of a personal phone call to touch base.

8. Contribute to the Top-of-the-Funnel

I always try to have at least three engines driving leads. Marketing can certainly be a huge driver for your cause, but you should also seek to build relationships with your existing customers as a way to generate referrals. In addition, you can build relationships with partners and influencers who know companies in your industry and can provide trusted advisor status to help you engage. Another engine is to target prospects who fit your profile of a great customer or who have something significant happening in their business right now (and thus would greatly benefit from your solution).

5 Key Qualities of Today’s Most Successful B2B Salespeople

They Understand Their Prospect’s Issues

Today’s top performers focus first on their prospect’s issues, rather than their solution’s capabilities. They research the key trends and trigger events in their prospect’s environment. They seek to uncover problems, goals or opportunities that their prospects cannot afford to ignore. Perhaps most important of all, they get the prospect to acknowledge the cost and consequences of not dealing with the issue. In doing so, they not only help to qualify whether the potential opportunity is real or not, they also start to build a compelling business case for change from early on in the sales conversation.

The Speak Their Prospect’s Language

It’s all too easy to bamboozle your prospects with your favourite acronyms, technical terms and product specifications. But most decision-maker level B2B prospects don’t appreciate or understand this. In fact, in most cases, there’s nothing more likely to cause them to tune out of the conversation. The most successful sales people have developed the ability to talk in their prospects language. They use the key terms and trends that are relevant to their prospect’s industry. And they talk as fellow business people would about the issues of the day.

They Have a Provocative Point of View

Bland sales conversations are never memorable, and they rarely result in action. So the third characteristic of many of today’s most effective sales people is their ability to articulate a provocative point of view that stimulates their prospect to see their business - and the issues and challenges they face - with a fresh perspective. By helping the prospect to consider their situation in a new light, sales people with a positively provocative point of view can build trust, stand out from the crowd, and help to reshape the prospect’s decision making criteria in their favour.

They Can Call Upon a Collection of Engaging Anecdotes

Prospects react much more positively to relevant stories and anecdotes than they do to formalised product or company pitches, particularly if these stories are based around situations they can relate to. I’ve observed many of the most effective sales people making their points by sharing naturally told anecdotes that describe how other people and organisations similar to the prospect were are to deal with issues the prospect can relate to. The best sales people are natural storytellers. But this skill can be learned and shared, and organisations can create pools of anecdotes that can be used by every sales person to establish empathy with the prospect.

They Focus on their Prospect’s Desired Outcomes

The final characteristic? They focus on the outcomes their prospects are trying to achieve. There is a subtle but important distinction between selling “solutions” and focusing on outcomes. Focusing on outcomes requires that they identify their prospect’s desired results. They understand what their prospects are trying to achieve, and their sales approach involves eliminating the obstacles and risks - perceived or real - that stand between their prospect and a complete resolution of the issue that initiated their search for a solution in the first place. In doing so, they not only reduce the possibility of their buying process ending in a decision to do nothing, they also help to create enthusiastic advocates that can support their future sales efforts.
So - those are the 5 qualities I have chosen to highlight. But there are undoubtedly many more. What are the most important qualities that you’ve observed in today’s most effective sales people?

B2B vs B2C Sales, Similarities and Differences

Sales is sales, right? If you have certain skills and a good bit of experience, you can sell to retail or corporate markets without difficulty. Well, maybe. There are some important similarities and differences between the approaches and skillsets required for successful B2B vs B2C sales.

How are B2C and B2B sales similar?

1. They both require a sales process.

1. B2B lead generation may take longer and involve more nurturing, but you still need well defined strategy and tactics in both arenas.
2. They both require alignment with marketing. If your online and offline marketing messages don't align well with sales communications, potential customers will shy away.
3. They both require excellent customer service. Once a sale is made, the ability a customer has to reach your support team and get helpful service has everything to do with retention and churn rate.

   How are B2B and B2C sales different?

   1. Emotional vs rational.
      Retail sales are often emotional, based on a perceived immediate need, while corporate sales are planned, evaluated and longer term. Online shopping has changed this to some extent, allowing customers to research and compare prior to purchase.
   2. Cheap vs Expensive.
      Again, not strictly true, but on average B2C sales have a lower price point and are less often paid out over time. There is a crossover where B2B sales involve products such as office supplies. Corporate services are often retainer-based over a long term. Luxury B2C items such as houses and cars are paid over a long term as well.
   3. One-off vs Relationship.
      Retail point-of-sale purchases are often done without prior contact and with no ongoing relationship between sales person and customer. This is seldom true in the B2B arena, where the entire sales process is often based on relationship building and trust.
   4. Experience.
      While there are many B2C sales people with years of experience, the learning (and success) curve is certainly shorter than in B2B. B2B sales people must know how to work with senior decision makers in addition to knowing their products cold. That can take years to develop and the right personality to make it work.
   So which transition is easier, B2C to B2B or B2B to B2C?
   They can both be tricky.
   B2C sales people are accustomed to a relatively short buy cycle and a much closer connection with marketing and e-commerce. Switching to the B2B world would tend to frustrate most B2C sales people due to the longer term strategy and requirements for relationship building. On the other hand, moving from B2B to a retail environment might prove to be too intense for the average B2B sales professional, with little of the predictability or planning they are used to.
   In either case, while building an effective sales force, you should take into account the backgrounds of your sales people. Are they the right fit for your products, services and markets? Are they transitioning from B2B to B2C or vice versa? Many companies find that significant training is required to achieve a high level of sales performance as these transitions present themselves. You may want to consider sales force outsourcing as a cost-effective alternative.