The Most Important Sales Skills You Must Master NOW

Effective selling ultimately comes down to a few key sales skills.

By having the right skillset, salespeople can significantly increase both their sales and their take-home income.

I see it all the time: Salesperson One is selling without important sales skills, just getting by, while Salesperson Two has mastered those skills…and is ultimately able to make more money and live the lifestyle they actually want.

In this video, I’m going to show you the most important sales skills you must master now. Check it out:

1. Leverage a process.

The vast majority of salespeople and small business owners are just winging it when they sell. Let’s face it: Aside from sales, every other profession requires real education and training. In order to become an attorney, for example, you have to go to law school and pass the bar. In order to become a CPA, you need to go to college and then pass the CPA exam.

But in sales, there’s no big test. There’s no formal training. It’s literally just a question of whether or not you’re willing to do it.

So, it’s no surprise that most salespeople and business owners are just making up the sales process as they go along. But one of the most important sales skills is to leverage a tried-and-true process for selling—and that can’t be done on the fly.

Maybe you’ve read a couple of books on sales. But without a concrete, step-by-step process that you can follow consistently in order to reliably close sales, you will struggle in sales. Having a process that you can leverage by following time and time again will be integral to your success in sales.

2. Demonstrate insight up front.

When there’s no value presented at the start of a selling situation, prospects get frustrated. Can you blame them? If you start pegging prospects with questions before you’ve even demonstrated value, they have no compelling reason to engage with you. This is particularly true with cold prospects—prospects who have no idea who you are. When it comes to having conversations with prospects, whether they’re warm or cold, one of the single most important sales skills is to demonstrate real insight up front.

Consider what piece of content you can share with your prospects (not talking about your pricing or how your company’s been in business for 375 years). This should be a piece of real, valuable content that will get them to open up and be willing to answer your questions.

3. Know the questions.

Once you’ve demonstrated insight up front, it’s time to ask the right questions to disqualify prospects. One of the most important sales skills you can develop is simply knowing what those questions are—having them down-pat, and being super comfortable with them.

Most prospects will come to you with relatively similar situations and challenges. So, you should have a set of consistent questions that you ask prospects to take them through your disqualification process. These questions will help you ultimately determine whether they’re a fit, while simultaneously building real value in the eyes of the prospect.

Script out those questions ahead of time. Don’t just ask random questions as they come to you.

4. Dig way deeper.

This important sales skill is one of the biggest differentiators between average salespeople and top-performing salespeople. Your ability to dig deeper when prospects are answering your questions has a tremendous impact on your selling potential.

For example, let’s say a prospect says something like, “This year, things have been really slow.” Most salespeople will simply give a response such as, “Oh, yeah. It’s really slow,” and then move on to their next question. But a top-performing salesperson will dig deeper, saying, “Can you unpack that for me? Why do you say it’s been a really slow year?” or, “Tell me more about that.”

The ability to spontaneously dig deeper is a high-level sales skill that demonstrates that you really know what you’re talking about. It also helps the prospect identify the real value of working with you.

5. Hold your ground.

Some prospects are inevitably going to resist your sales process. When a prospect pushes back on the sales process, most salespeople and business owners immediately cave. Then they tend to go into old-school pitch mode. Instead, one of the most important sales skills you can master is simply to hold your ground. Stay strong in your process. Even when a prospect resists being a part of your process, be willing to hold your ground because prospects are often wrong. The old adage that the customer is always right is not true. Prospects are often wrong; they don’t know what they need.

6. Show you can solve.

Don’t jump into a boilerplate feature-and-benefit presentation. That’s the same thing as just giving a canned pitch. Instead, demonstrate that you can solve the challenges that the prospect mentioned in the earlier part of the conversation. When you’re able to show that you can solve those challenges, the prospect will see the value you bring. This doesn’t mean that you have to show every single thing that you offer. Rather, simply focus on demonstrating that you can solve the challenges they mentioned—and then stop talking. This is one of the most important sales skills you can master, and it will help you close way more deals than the standard pitch approach.

7. Be NSO.

NSO stands for Next Step oObsessed. The more obsessed we are with next steps in every sales conversation, the better off we’re going to be. Consistently scheduling next steps is one of the single most important sales skills you can develop. Many sales fall apart simply because there was no scheduled next step. We’ve all been in that situation before. Be obsessed with having a next step in place, and you’ll be so much more likely to ultimately keep the deal on track. It’s one of the simplest yet most important sales skills you can master.

So there you have it. Now you know The Most Important Sales Skills You Must Master NOW. Which of these important sales skills did you find most useful for your own selling approach? Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments section below to join the conversation.