Sales skills are not shown by how many conversation techniques someone knows. What is decisive is what employees do with them in concrete customer situations: Do they understand the customer's starting point? Can they make the benefit of an offer understandable? Do they negotiate consciously and remain capable of acting even under pressure?
For me, three areas go together here: conducting customer conversations, shaping negotiations, and developing personal effectiveness. Which skills within these areas are particularly important depends on the sales task, the customers and the requirements of your company.
From Gregor Minichberger, Sales Trainer and Coach. The basis is my White paper „Sales Competences“.
Sales competence is more than just conversational technique
„Our employees need to sell better.“ That describes a desire, but not yet a concrete development task. Should they approach new customers, understand existing customers better, explain complex solutions in a comprehensible way, or appear more confident in price negotiations?
Therefore, I would not start with a list of seminar topics, but with the situations that need to be handled in sales. Only from this can one deduce what skills are required and where development should sensibly begin.
An example: an employee can explain their product brilliantly, but learns little about the customer's financial goals during the conversation. In that case, the next development step may not lie in an even better presentation. It lies in asking more targeted questions, exploring answers in greater depth and connecting one's own solution to the customer's needs.
Conducting customer meetings: understanding, connecting, deciding
For me, a good sales conversation starts before the first word is spoken. Preparation includes the available customer information, a clear goal for the conversation, and an idea of how the discussion might be conducted. Such a plan is intended to provide guidance, not to replace listening.
During the conversation itself, several skills are interlinked:
- Establishing contact and orientation: Address the customer in an appropriate manner and work with them to clarify what the discussion should be about.
- Understanding the customer situation: Ask open-ended questions, listen actively and pick up on key points. When dealing with business clients, this also involves understanding their business model and the economic context.
- Making the benefits clear: Don't present everything the company can do, but establish the connection between the offer and the customer's specific concern.
- Leading to a decision: Summarise the key requirements, clarify any outstanding issues and provide the customer with appropriate guidance in their decision-making process.
These skills should not be practised as separate techniques. If you listen carefully, you can ask more targeted questions. If you have understood the customer’s concerns, you can present your case in a more relevant way.
Instead of saying, „Our product saves time“, a member of staff could, for example, ask: „At which stage in your process is the most time currently being wasted?“ The answer provides a starting point for discussing specific benefits later on.
Shaping negotiations: recognising interests behind demands
Negotiation skills do not begin only when the customer asks for a discount. They involve setting your own objectives, understanding the interests of both sides and developing possible solutions. This also includes having a viable alternative in the event that no agreement is reached.
It is important to me not to rush into a back-and-forth of demands and counter-demands. The statement „That’s too expensive“ does not in itself indicate whether the issue is a budget limit, a comparison with competitors, payment terms or a benefit that has not yet been recognised.
An employee therefore needs the ability to question demands without belittling the customer. They should stand up for their own interests, be aware of their decision-making limits and consider possible concessions in return, rather than making concessions on autopilot.
Difficult negotiating behaviour also falls into this category. It should be possible to address pressure or unfair tactics without losing one’s objectivity. The aim is not to conclude every discussion at any cost, but to reach an agreement that is sustainable for the collaboration.
Personal skills: remaining capable of taking action even under pressure
Knowing a good question and actually asking it in a tense situation are two different things. That is why, for me, personal skills are directly linked to development in sales.
In the white paper, I describe five fields for this:
- Goal orientation Understand overarching goals, set your own priorities, and pursue agreed steps with perseverance.
- Communication skills: Reach out to people, listen, ask good questions and adapt to the person you’re talking to.
- Emotional stability: Stay objective under pressure and maintain your ability to process information and take action.
- Conflict resolution skills: Address tensions in good time, clarify interests and work on a solution.
- Sense of responsibility: Make use of one's own discretion, stand by one's mistakes and look for solutions when difficulties arise.
These terms should not lead to sweeping judgements about a person’s character. Saying „He isn’t good at dealing with conflict“ is of little help in terms of development. A more specific statement would be: „If a customer requests an additional service beyond what has been agreed, he does not raise the issue of the extra work involved.“
This turns a label into a workable situation. Manager and employee can consider together which behaviour would be helpful and how it can be tested.
Turning the overview into a skills profile for your team
Not every employee needs every skill to the same degree. Consultative selling of complex solutions places different demands on someone than a brief re-order call with a long-standing customer.
I therefore recommend applying the overview to your own sales operations in four steps:
- Select situations: Which customer situations are particularly important or demanding for your team? Gather concrete examples instead of general buzzwords.
- Weighing up skills: What skills are needed in these situations? Choose a few key areas to focus on, rather than trying to tackle the whole list at once.
- Describe the behaviour: How would employees and the manager recognise that the skill is being applied? Formulate observable actions.
- Arrange development: What is practiced next, in which situation is it applied, and subsequently reflected on together?
A possible development goal is then no longer „better needs identification“, but: „In the next conversation, the employee explores an economic challenge faced by the client in more depth and summarises their understanding before proposing a solution.“
This is an example, not a prescribed sequence of conversation. The crucial thing is that the goal fits the task and is understandable and actionable for the employee.
Bringing together capability, conversation quality, and implementation
A competence profile first clarifies what employees should be able to do. The next question is how this ability can be recognised in customer interactions. That is what the specialist article is about „Recognising and developing conversation quality“.
For a selected skill to actually be used in everyday life, appropriate opportunities, tools and support are also needed. I show how such measures can interact at „Structuring the transfer in sales“.
The manager has an active role as a sales coach here. They help to clarify requirements, reflect on concrete experiences and agree on the next development step. Not as additional control, but as support for selling better.
The white paper as a starting point for your team meeting
My white paper brings together the three areas of competence across three pages. It serves as guidance for your work, not a universal catalogue of requirements and not a standardised aptitude test.
Use it, for example, for a discussion with your team: Which competencies do we particularly need? Where are we already experiencing confidence? Which specific situation do we want to handle better next?
Download whitepaper „Sales Competencies“
The download is freely accessible, without having to provide your email address. If you would like to turn this into a suitable development project for your sales team, let's talk about it.