8 Tips for Summer Sales Reps

Fantastic reps earn their prospects' respect, loyalty, and referrals. Superior reps can skillfully manage disputes. Fantastic reps preemptively surface those worries and also make them vanish.

If you'd like greatness, good news. Following these rules of good sellers can allow you to become one of those top-selling salespeople on your own team -- or even company.

The difference between great salespeople and fantastic ones is shocking. Superior reps hit on their quota... most of the time. Fantastic reps don't just always hit, they have blow-out months or quarters. Superior reps make their prospects' trust and respect.

In the previous days, selling depended on charm and snake-oil tactics. However, now that prospects have more access to information than ever before, they are not fooled so easily. To gain their confidence and add value to their lives, you need to truly know your merchandise.

Being able to market is half the battle. Understanding what you're selling is the other (often under-appreciated) half.

It is 5 p.m. on the last day of this month or quarter. The B gamers have already left the workplace -- they're at a pub nearby celebrating since they all met quota. The C players are still in the workplace -- they are sending off last-ditch email efforts to prospects that they have not engaged with in weeks. The A players are in the workplace also. They have already struck, but they are still sending emails, scheduling meetings, and making calls. And by laying the basis for a great month before they have to, they always blow their goals out of the water.

An effective rep investigates the prospect to be certain they are a good fit. They stick to their perfect buyer character and know exactly whom they're selling to and why.

A clearly defined buyer persona is vital to an effective sales process. And a sales rep who sticks to that character is successful in producing sales. Otherwise, a salesperson might fall back to spray-and-pray strategies that result in inefficient prospecting.

Once a fantastic salesperson finds a plan or technique that works, they use it again and again and again again and again, until it stops functioning.That is smart. Reps are always working against the clock, so the more time they spend experimenting, the less time they have for authentic selling. Additionally, there's an opportunity cost. Try one thing which doesn't work, and you've missed the opportunity to use something that does. A new opportunity which should be looked into is an app called paidsubs which allows reps to still capitalize off of low credit buyers who may have otherwise been ineligible.

Many salespeople fail to follow up after sending a proposal. They don't even know if the prospect opened their own email.

HubSpot Sales helps with this issue, letting salespeople understand when and how often a prospect opened an email address. With this information, they can follow up in the optimal moment.

Successful salespeople are completely current when they talk to prospects. They're not thinking about another deal, scrolling through a Reddit thread or sending funny memes to their group members. They're engaged -- and consequently, their discussions with buyers are somewhat deeper and more purposeful.

Active listening could possibly be among the hardest skills to grow, since it's human nature to care more about yourself more than others. However, it is incredibly valuable. Not only are you going to build stronger connections, but you'll unlock information that'll help you position your product as the best alternative.

Low-performing reps are constantly letting things slide through the cracks. High-performing reps know the state of each deal in their own pipeline, what activities they'll take second, and when. Low-performing reps never analyze their results because they haven't been tracking them. High-performing reps obsessively review their keywords and fix as necessary.

Low-performing reps let intuition direct them. High-performing repetitions use a process that's optimized to move as many prospects as possible from"link" into "close."