Six Essential Sales Communications Skills

For any customer conversation to be productive, your customers must understand what you’re saying, see the value in what you have to offer, and trust you.

How do you convey value, build trust, and persuade customers to buy? In my experience working with sales organizations, the first 80% of the sales process — marketing, product training and sales enablement efforts — is critical.

But, it’s the last 20% — how you communicate in front of the customer — that more often makes or breaks your success.

How confident are you in your sales team’s ability to perform when their moments arrive — when they get in front of the customer? Knowing what to say and how to say it takes real skill. And, building the necessary skills demands preparation and practice.

Master six Moment of Truth Readiness^™ communication skills needed to sell effectively. By helping your salespeople master the following six Moment of Truth Readiness skills, you can ensure that they’re game-time ready and prepared for any interaction — virtual or face-to-face — with today’s buyers.

Messages
You need be able to quickly create a customer-centric message that demonstrates you understand a customer’s situation and challenges.

Stories
You should be able to articulate a concise, memorable story that demonstrates your product’s or service’s value, and which the customer finds intriguing, relevant, and entertaining.

Interactions
It’s critical that you’re able to create and sustain a dialogue, where the customer walks away from the interaction feeling valued, listened to, and cared about.

Executive Presence
In order to be perceived as credible and worthy of a buyer’s time, you should possess the ability to remain poised, convey passion, and demonstrate expertise in challenging or high-stakes situations.

Presentations
When presenting, your goal is to deliver a presentation that ultimately leaves the customer in a frame of mind to want to do something different. To want to take the next step with you.

Conversations
You need to be able to engage customers in a dialogue that makes them want to continue discussing their business challenges with you, because they believe you’ll add value and help them to be successful.

Do you really know what happens when your salespeople get in front of the customer? If you’re a sales leader, challenge yourself and examine how you’re investing your time and money to ready your sales force.

If the investments you’re making in your organization aren’t bearing the ripe, juicy fruit you expect, it’s possible that members of your sales team may not be as prepared for their moments of truth as they could be.

To discuss your sales challenges and how Vantage can help, browse our Sales Academy Training Programs. We also welcome your questions, so feel free to drop us a line here. 

Originally published in 2014 for the Mandel Communications blog.