3 Sales Skills Everyone Should Know
By Geoffrey James
The best salespeople are experts in three crucial human skills that can make anyone healthier and happier:
1. Listening
Everyone knows that good listening skills are important, but in my experience, in the business world, the people who listen best are the salespeople, because they must understand a problem before they can present a solution.
There are two parts to effective listening: 1) Stop flapping your gums, and 2) Stop thinking about what you're going to say when the other person is done speaking. The latter is far more difficult than the former.
How do you learn to listen? Actually it's pretty simple. The moment you realize you're deciding what to say, suppress your inner dialogue and refocus on what the other person is saying. You'll be surprised what you learn.
2. Simplifying
Because we live in a complex world that overflows with decisions and options, the best salespeople are experts at cutting through the BS and reaching the gist in a way that anyone, even a harried customer, can easily understand.
Simplifying doesn't mean being simplistic, and it never means being condescending. Simplifying isn't about dumbing things down; it's about clearing things up.
How do you learn to simplify? Imagine yourself in the other person's shoes and especially yourself in a way that person might understand.
3. Being thick-skinned
Great salespeople tolerate rejection because if they didn't they wouldn't be able to do the job. Being thick-skinned doesn't mean being thickheaded; it means being able to lose without taking the loss to heart.
Whether you take rejection seriously or treat it as an irrelevant setback determines how happy you'll be in business and in life. Some people are born thick-skinned, some learn the hard way, and some people never learn. The last group are almost always pretty miserable.
How to become thick-skinned? Stop measuring your self-worth by what you think people are thinking about you. Because, truthfully, unless you can read minds you'll never really know what other people are really thinking. So why obsess about it?