Sales Coaching – The Key to Meeting Your Full Potential in the World of Sales

A career in sales can be one of the most satisfying and financially rewarding there is, but fail to meet your full potential in the big, bad world of selling and it can also be one of the most stressful, frustrating and miserable ways to try and earn a living.

Although there are those who would argue that it takes a special kind of person to be successful in the sales environment, others consider that, armed with the right sales tactics, being a salesperson is a job that anyone could do. In reality though, things aren’t quite that simple and it takes a whole range of skills, knowledge and personal qualities to be able to achieve consistently good results. Reading a whole library of sales manuals in itself isn’t enough to make any individual a top salesperson, and in fact with so many contradictory and now outdated approaches to selling, doing so is only likely to result in confusion and failure. Relying entirely on certain personality traits, on the other hand, is equally unlikely to earn you the Salesperson of the Year Award if you don’t have the knowledge to back them up.

Being a top performing salesperson requires everything from the ability to identify key decision-makers and develop outstanding relationships with them, to being able to home in on customers’ pain points and deliver compelling sales messages which provide solutions. It means being able to juggle a head full of figures to calculate prices, volumes and discounts, and it means having the skills and the perseverance to be able to close the deal. While many people have the natural ability or the learned skills to do some of these things, only the very best can deliver on all accounts, but with sales coaching, it is possible for any salesperson to make radical improvements across the board.

As distinct from the more generic forms of sales coaching which are offered through books or training courses, personal sales coaching provides the opportunity for individuals to work on a one-to-one basis and to learn how to draw on their own natural traits and learned abilities to achieve maximum results. Choosing a sales coach, however, does require care, because of course a sales coach doesn’t just need to have personal experience in the sales environment, but also the ability to teach others how to be successful in the field. Even the best salesperson in the world doesn’t necessarily have the ability to recognize the strengths and weaknesses in others, or the skills or the personality required to teach and support others.

Another area where those who are interested in receiving sales coaching need to take care is in choosing a sales coach whose knowledge is completely up-to-date. In a world where globalization and ever-changing technology presents new challenges to salespeople almost on a daily basis, it is vital that those who receive sales coaching are exposed to current thinking, attitudes and techniques. The pushy and somewhat aggressive techniques of yesteryear, for example, have long since been replaced with much more sophisticated techniques based on extensive human research and it is vital to choose a sales coach who is up-to-date with modern methodologies and who can bring innovation into his or her teaching.

The sales coaches that you meet through www.FreelanceCoach.com are selected for their solid backgrounds in the sales arena, as well as for their extensive coaching experience. You can find out more about what sales coaching has to offer by visiting the site.

by Julie-Ann Amos, professional writer, and owner of international writing agency www.ExquisiteWriting.com

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