7 Sales Tips for Success in Your Career

Many individuals who enjoy interacting with people, like the challenge of meeting goals, and are looking for a lucrative career path consider a job in sales. Depending on the industry, an entry-level salesperson can easily make upward of $50,000 with the possibility of reaching six figures once they learn the ropes and apply sales best practices to up their game. If you’re starting out in sales and wondering what makes a good salesperson, consider the following sales tips for success.

1. Identify a Mentor

When learning how to be a salesperson, there’s no better way than to learn from the best. Identify a mentor early on in your career (perhaps via networking) who can support you, guide you, teach you sales best practices, and offer you sales tips for success. It can also be helpful to shadow your mentor to learn firsthand what makes a good salesperson.

2. Create an Entry Plan

When you’re just starting out, take the time to create a plan that outlines how you will go about getting your foot in the door while taking into account sales best practices. How will you first approach a prospect? How will you approach them after the first attempt? How many attempts will you make? How much time will you allow between attempts?

Considering that it can take several tries to finally connect with decision makers in an organization or get someone to pick up the phone and respond, creating an entry plan can help you stay on track. Email, voicemail, social media, and in-person conversations are all possibilities of how you might connect with a prospect.

3. Focus on Pain Points

One of the top sales tips for success is to listen and understand a prospect’s pain points. By taking the time to learn what the challenges are for prospects, you’ll be better able to formulate your message to explain how your product or service addresses those points. When you can make a positive difference, you’re more likely to close the deal.

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4. Test Your Approach

As you’re learning how to be a salesperson, it’s wise to test your approach out on yourself, your mentor, friends, or colleagues. You could choose to leave yourself or someone else a test voicemail and listen to it to get a sense of how you sound and come across. You could also do a test presentation or meeting with someone to practice and ask for feedback.

5. Don’t Rush It

If you’re just starting out and learning how to be a salesperson, you might feel the pressure to close as many deals as quickly as possible. However, rushing the process with prospects could mean you lose sales. People don’t like being pushed or feeling cornered. By being patient and allowing yourself to take time to walk your prospects through the process over a series of phone calls and meetings, they’re more likely to trust you. And trust leads to sales and the possibility of long-term relationships for repeat business.

6. Conduct Company Research

Before you rush in to make a sales pitch, spend the time required to research an organization. With the amount of information available online, there’s no excuse for going into a meeting without equipping yourself with this type of information. If you attempt to make a sale without knowing the ins and outs of a business, the company is likely to say, “No, thanks.”

7. Research Available Jobs to Advance

As you continue to grow and learn what makes a good salesperson, you’ll be able to move up in the sales world to earn more money and commissions. iHireSalesPeople is a dedicated job board for sales positions available throughout the US. Whether you’re looking for an associate position or a senior-level account manager position, there are several options available to you as you explore and expand your horizons in the sales arena.