"Great salespeople are relationship builders who provide value and help their customers win." – Jeffrey Gitomer
I never planned to be in a sales-oriented job, but if you think about it, sales are everywhere; it keeps the economy going. Large, experienced companies would shut down without sales. Sales is a skill where you introduce products to prospects and demonstrate product knowledge and expertise. Well, for me, it was something summoned itself in my career path. Therefore, this article is my take on why somebody would pursue a career in sales. I have never done sales in my life, and I like to take on new challenges. Therefore, it allows me to elaborate on the skills I have learned throughout my journey.
Great communicators are highly valued, respected and trusted as they demonstrate vast knowledge in their areas of expertise. People won't listen to you if you don't know what you are talking about. That is why product knowledge of what you are presenting is very important in an in-depth manner. Great communication is less about answering them and more about taking the time to listen to them and asking quality questions. Listening more than you speak is always the best way to go to be aware of any misunderstanding that might occur. I've also learned that non-verbal communication speaks louder than verbal communication. Therefore, it is important to keep an eye out for tone of voice, body language, and facial expression. Great communicators listen with their eyes and ears, paying attention to people's hand gestures, postures, and eye contact, as they can send powerful messages when coming in contact with prospects.
Sales is a numbers game; we must go through the whole lead of prospects to find the right people whose problems we can solve with our products. This process consists of many direct face-on rejections; some can be soft, while others can be hard. We must keep in mind that the customer's behaviour is a factor we cannot control; thus, we cannot let them affect our attitude and mental state. The key is to keep focusing on the good interactions, reflecting on every interaction while understanding the development phase and not quitting. Being able to go through the whole day while maintaining your attitude is something that is going to dictate your results in the long run.
Everything in life can be learned if you have the right mentality toward it. Working at Pyro has allowed me to learn several skills such as sales, leadership and team building, how to drive the team's performance to hit our numbers, relationship building and many more. Sales allow you to acquire a lot of transferrable skills, which are valuable to employers as they are harder to teach employees. These are some skills that they can transfer to any other career to leverage. Moreover, a sales career gives you a lot of flexibility in your daily life with many opportunities like travelling. Depending on the market, sales professionals need to go there to hit their sales target while solving the community’s problems.
Sales is a very performance-driven career with healthy competition. So, if you are an individual who is willing to bet on yourself on how much you can make, how much influence you can have and looking for a high-income potential, sales is something you should definitely take a shot at. It develops you to have goals, builds your confidence and competence, and prepares your resilience and grit to take on any hurdles in life.
