Are your sales skills as impressive as Dubai's skyline?
Your Dubai sales team is often the face of your company. They are the first point of contact with customers and are essential for keeping the production line moving. So next time one of your sales team is presenting to a new prospect in their Sheikh Zayad offices, how do you make sure their technique doesn’t kill the sale before the first round of coffee has been sipped?
Not knowing your own business
Confidence is everything in sales and if your sales team doesn’t understand your business thoroughly, they will be poor ambassadors for your company. A thorough grounding in your business will give your newest salesperson the ability to go out and sell with confidence.
Whether you are a small start up or a major league business, it’s important to give sales people an initial training session in your business. The more they understand who your core customers are, what products you have currently, and those in development, the issues faced by customers, and how your business solves those issues, the more likely they will become a more effective salesperson for your business.
Lack of manners
People make quick decisions on whether they can trust you or not. Which is why, in any business environment, good manners are important. Close observation of business etiquette is a must, especially with international relationship building: what is accepted locally may not be internationally. A smile, a good handshake, or the right level of bow, being prompt for meetings: these all add up to create a good impression.
If you aren’t a natural at good manners, buy yourself a business etiquette book and brush up on your skills. It’ll help you win more business for your company, and probably improve your social skills outside of work as well.
Selling too hard
The days of hard selling are over. Big business is too sophisticated nowadays to fall for the pushy salesman approach. If you’ve been trained in the hard sell, it’s time to learn some new techniques. Today it’s all about relationship building. The first few meetings you have with a customer are all about learning about their business to find out how your business can really help them.
Take the time to understand both new and established customers and you’ll reap the benefits over time. Leave the hard sell to the dodgy salespeople who don’t want repeat business.
Playing the blame game
When things go wrong with a customer’s order, the easy route for the salesperson is to blame some unknown link in the business. But that doesn’t help your customer. Control your reaction to a complaint and use the experience to improve your sales process, or to identify areas in the business that need to be overhauled.
Mixing the message
If the salesperson is telling a different story to the brochure, or your website, who can the customer trust? Throughout your organisation there has to be a real understanding of your brand and what it means. This way, every time the customer speaks to anyone in your business the brand message is re-enforced. Creating trust on a daily basis should be the number one rule. It will help prevent your sales team making basic mistakes when selling to customers.
Once the position of trusted advisor has been established it will be easier to drive projects through to agreement and completion. Since the consultant has invested in relationship building they gain broad insight into the clients business environment, critical drivers, priorities and future business initiatives and will be in a valued position to advise on these.