How to Differentiate in Sales

1. Identify and Create a Sales Process
2. Practice and Improve Your Sales Pitch
3. Follow Up on Open Deals
4. Be a Great Listener
5. Embrace Rejection
6. Learn from a Mentor
7. Review Your Strengths and Weaknesses
8. Identify What Motivates You
9. Be Able to Walk Away
10. Prioritize Your Wellbeing
    
    

1. Identify and Create a Sales Process

First and foremost, you’ll need a repeatable sales process that you and your sales team can implement within your CRM. Based on the #1 sales evaluation, “elite” salespeople utilize a consistent, stage-based selling system. Having a sales process keeps salespeople on track with the stages a buyer goes through on the path to a decision, and it helps remove inefficiencies from the sales cycle. By implementing a consistent sales process, salespeople will see better results in a short period of time.

2. Practice and Improve Your Sales Pitch

Much like your sales process, sales reps need to hone, craft, and practice their sales pitch. You can start creating a better pitch by doing more research on your prospects, putting yourself in their shoes, and asking great questions about their business and challenges.

As a salesperson, you must invoke confidence. You can do this by practicing and perfecting your sales pitch. We call this your Unique Selling Approach, and when you share it, your prospect should react with “That’s me” or “How do you do that?” Sales leaders must help their people practice this so their USA is natural and conversational and helps them differentiate in the sales process.

3. Follow Up on Open Deals

A good sales rep follows up on open deals. As a salesperson, you will have more success following up on your existing prospects if you strategically determine how to add value to the potential relationship in your follow-up plan. It’s estimated that nearly half of salespeople never follow up on a prospect, and only 10% follow up three times or more. This is a problem, as it’s estimated that 80% of all closed deals occur between the fifth and twelfth outreach.

Following up also shows the prospect that you’re organized and considerate enough to reach out again. Most people will appreciate your follow-up, and by reminding them of your previous conversation, you can stay top of mind with prospects and differentiate yourself.

4. Be a Great Listener

Having an open dialogue is critical in nurturing your prospects and giving them a voice. Make sure you’re really listening to what they’re saying, as it can help you close more deals. By listening to better understand your prospects, you can identify what your prospect wants, how they want it, and why.

Listening to understand takes concentration and the ability to remain undistracted by what you can offer as a solution. If you can truly understand what your prospect wants and needs from you and repeat that back to them, you will differentiate yourself and build confidence with the prospect. Sales leaders, this is a critical skill to focus on and practice with your team.

5. Embrace Rejection

In sales, you will always be met with rejection. Accepting this fact, and learning from your no’s, is key to becoming a better salesperson. The best way to deal with rejection is by debriefing after a sale is lost to fully understand why the prospect did not buy from you.

Sales leaders and salespeople should set structured time to debrief, find out what was not done or revealed, and ensure those steps are not missed next time. This will help you build confidence and improve your sales process by gathering better prospect information.

Elite salespeople are quick to get back on track and maintain robust sales pipelines. Rejection in sales is simply part of the job that helps them move on to the next opportunity.

6. Learn from a Mentor

Learning from a mentor is one of the best ways to differentiate yourself in sales and become a better salesperson. Having someone who can show you the ropes and provide constructive feedback can drastically improve your sales abilities. If your company is looking for professional sales training, guidance, and leadership, check out our Sales Growth Coaching program.

7. Review Your Strengths and Weaknesses

All great salespeople take time to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, focusing on leveraging what they do well while improving weaker areas. Purposely identifying opportunities to improve in prospecting, communication, or closing deals can increase the number of desired outcomes.

Sales evaluations can provide salespeople with insights into areas they may not recognize, helping build confidence and refine their selling approach. Successful salespeople are continual learners who intentionally gather information about their own performance.

8. Identify What Motivates You

We all have motives behind everything we do. Identifying what motivates you can be one of the best steps toward becoming a better salesperson. Are you motivated to become a better version of yourself? Do you seek recognition for your work? Are you striving to achieve your ideal lifestyle?

By recognizing what drives you, you can create an action plan that moves you closer to your goals. This clarity can provide the motivation needed to improve yourself, and close more deals.

9. Be Able to Walk Away

Follow-up is essential, but it’s also important to know when to walk away. If you’ve made double-digit attempts to reach a prospect, or they remain standoffish, it may be time to move on. This can be difficult the deeper you are in the sales pipeline, but successful salespeople know when to let go and focus on the next opportunity.

If a prospect is not returning emails or calls, your time is better spent pursuing new leads. Elite salespeople differentiate themselves by knowing when to remove a prospect from the pipeline.

10. Prioritize Your Wellbeing

You must prioritize your work-life balance and mental health. You’re no good to your company or your prospects’ time if you are overwhelmed, burned out, or distracted. Sales moves fast, and that pace can be stressful.

Taking breaks, getting fresh air, using time off, and maintaining a personal life can help counterbalance job stress and prevent burnout. To be relaxed and confident in selling, you must stay healthy in both mind and body.

In Summary

Selling is not going to suddenly become easier. Leads are not likely to become more plentiful. So the question worth asking is this: What will you do to create your slight edge in selling? What small actions, done consistently week after week, will lead to meaningful gains in production?

Try one or all of these 10 tips for differentiating yourself in selling, and let us know how they work for you.

Register for our upcoming live webinar to learn why top lenders drive up to 10x more revenue than bottom performers and uncover the four qualities that define diamond-level relationship managers! You’ll gain practical insights on developing stronger producers and access a free tool to benchmark your team’s relationship-building skills. Free registration, recording provided.

Ready to develop stronger relationship-building skills across your sales team? Download our free eBook The Relationship Selling Guide for proven strategies and frameworks, or contact Anthony Cole Training Group to learn how our assessments and coaching can transform your team's ability to build rapport and close more business.

What Is a Prospect’s “Love Language”?

Prospects don’t respond well when salespeople fail to tailor their message for resonance. In other terms, that means your salespeople are not speaking the prospect’s love language.

A prospect’s love language comes down to two things:

• The problems or challenges they are dealing with right now
• The future growth opportunities they see on the horizon

When your salespeople lead with anything other than those two areas, they risk wasting the prospect’s time and missing the opportunity to move the relationship forward.

Salespeople often fall into the trap of leading with product features, company history, or generic value statements. What prospects care about is whether your salesperson understands their world and can help solve real problems or support real goals.

That is where many sales conversations go off track.

The Two Challenges Facing Financial Services Sales Teams

As a national sales training and coaching firm, Anthony Cole Training Group has a front-row seat to what is happening inside financial services sales teams across the country. Two challenges consistently rise to the top.

1. Fewer Quality Prospect Meetings

With fewer face-to-face meetings over the past several years, many salespeople have struggled to adapt their relationship-building skills to a virtual environment. Resistance to meetings has increased, and too many salespeople do not know how to work through that resistance.

The result is fewer quality conversations and fewer opportunities entering the early stages of the pipeline.

2. Margin Erosion at the Finish Line

When a deal finally starts moving forward, many salespeople become overly focused on simply getting it across the finish line. They cave on rate or price to close rather than protecting value.

Over time, this behavior erodes margin and conditions prospects to expect concessions.

So, guess what? We lead with those two things… and nothing else. Because those are the issues prospects actually care about.

Prospects are far more willing to engage when they feel understood. When your salespeople speak directly to a prospect’s challenges and growth objectives, they immediately separate themselves from competitors. They become relevant. They earn the right to continue the conversation.

Coaching for Relevance and Results

Too many sales teams still operate with a “hope strategy.” They hope prospects will be interested. They hope meetings will go well. They hope deals will close.

High-performing sales organizations do not rely on hope. They coach their salespeople to lead with purpose, preparation, and messaging that resonates.

• If you want more meetings, coach your salespeople to lead with what matters to prospects.
• If you want stronger pipelines, reinforce early-stage activity.

• If you want healthier margins, hold your team accountable for selling on value instead of price.

Teach your salespeople to lead with prospect priorities, and you’ll build stronger relationships, healthier pipelines, and more consistent growth.

Register for our upcoming live webinar to learn why top lenders drive up to 10x more revenue than bottom performers and uncover the four qualities that define diamond-level relationship managers! You’ll gain practical insights on developing stronger producers and access a free tool to benchmark your team’s relationship-building skills. Free registration, recording provided.

Ready to develop stronger relationship-building skills across your sales team? Download our free eBook The Relationship Selling Guide for proven strategies and frameworks, or contact Anthony Cole Training Group to learn how our assessments and coaching can transform your team's ability to build rapport and close more business.

Start with the Right Mindset

A recommended first step is to read Go-Givers Sell More by Bob Burg and John Mann. They offer powerful insights on redefining the sales process as an opportunity to give and help, rather than simply to take and close.

At Anthony Cole Training Group, we use the #1 sales assessment in the industry by Objective Management Group, which defines the 21 Core Sales Competencies needed for sales mastery. Among these, the competencies for the Relationship Builder are critical to success. See below.

The Seven-Second Window

Here's an important reality: seven seconds is the average length of time a person has to make a first impression.

If that first impression falls flat, a salesperson is unlikely to get another chance with that potential client. But when they nail it, the client takes them seriously from the start. Trust begins to form immediately.

And trust is everything. Without it, prospects won't share their real issues or discuss money. They won't consider making a change, and they certainly won't commit to a next step.

Whether the initial meeting is face-to-face, over the phone, or via video, salespeople don't have time to waste. Understanding how people form first judgments (and what they can control) makes all the difference.

What Really Influences First Impressions

When meeting face-to-face, a majority of how a salesperson is judged comes from non-verbal data: appearance and body language. Less than 10% is influenced by the words that they speak. People do, in fact, judge a book by its cover. When the initial encounter is over the phone, 70% of how a salesperson is perceived is based on their tone of voice and 30% on their words. Clearly, it's not what a salesperson says - it's the way they say it.

Building Credibility Fast

Another excellent resource on this topic is The Speed of Trust by Stephen M. R. Covey. According to Covey, "The good news is that we can increase our credibility and we can increase it fast, particularly if we understand the four 'cores' that are fundamental":

1. Integrity - Do you walk your talk?
2. Intent - Are you genuinely seeking mutual benefit?
3. Capabilities - Can you actually deliver what you promise?
4. Results - Do you have a track record of success?

A Proven Opening Approach

With the need for strong first impressions in mind, here's a suggested approach to open a first meeting that accelerates rapport building:

Understanding the Prospect's Mindset

Of course, prospects bring their own barriers to building rapport. They're busy and distracted. They've done their homework and know more than salespeople often assume. And they've had experiences (good and bad) with other salespeople that shape how they view this interaction.

Here's a valuable exercise for every salesperson:

Think about a recent encounter where you were the buyer and a salesperson really "got" you. Maybe it was at a store, a service provider, or even a B2B situation.

• What was that experience like? What made it stand out?
• What specific things did that salesperson do or say that made you feel understood?
• How did their approach make you more willing to open up or move forward?
• What can you replicate from that experience in your own sales conversations?

This reflection can reveal powerful insights about building rapport that textbooks can't teach.

Going Deeper Than Surface-Level Questions

In early conversations with prospects, a salesperson's goal isn't just to qualify or pitch. It's to uncover the prospect's real pain. What problems are they actually facing? What have they already tried to solve them? How is their current provider performing, and where are the gaps?

These conversations aren't just about gathering surface-level information. They're about building genuine insight so the salesperson can determine whether a true, mutually beneficial relationship can form. Because at the end of the day, the best sales relationships are built on a foundation of understanding, trust, and the sincere desire to help.

Ready to develop stronger relationship-building skills across your sales team? Download our free eBook The Relationship Selling Guide for proven strategies and frameworks, or contact Anthony Cole Training Group to learn how our assessments and coaching can transform your team's ability to build rapport and close more business.

Here are two areas to consider:

Salespeople making assumptions.

• Your prospect says they are unhappy, thinking about, or looking into options, and you automatically start thinking they are ready to buy. A real live prospect! This can happen because you do not have a healthy skepticism of prospects. You get happy ears, believe everything they say at surface level, and fail to ask deeper, probing questions.
• Has your prospect ever said, “I’m the decision-maker,” and you took them at their word? Did you ask them who else might be affected by this decision?  When they have made decisions like this in the past, who was involved?
• Here’s another sales mistake in making assumptions. Your prospect talks about their current provider and the mistakes they have made, their bad service and price increases, and you think they are willing to leave the incumbent. Not so fast, they might just be looking for more information to make their current provider step up and improve, or get better pricing.
• What about when the prospect says, “This looks great, I really like what you’ve done here.” Do you think that they are ready to buy, and then surprised when they say “I need to think it over.” ? Did you uncover the monetary impact of their not making this change or other compelling reasons to act now or did you make the big sales mistake of assuming they were ready to buy with a few signals?
  
  

2. Prospects make assumptions too.

   How often do prospects make assumptions about you and how you do business?
   
   
   • Have they been brainwashed by marketing and social media that everything is about price?
   • Do they believe that all insurance brokers, bankers, and investment advisors are only out there to make commissions and don’t really care about them and their needs?
   • Do they figure that you are in the business of providing free information and quotes because that is what they have experienced from all the other mediocre salespeople they’ve dealt with?
   • Do they assume they can take their time because you will pretty much do anything to get the business?
   • Do they believe you are like all the rest? Because your pitch sounded like every other salesperson they have met with:
     
     
     • "We have great service"
     • "Our products are industry-leading"
     • "We care about our clients"
     • "Our pricing is competitive"

The next time you make a call or go out on an appointment, pretend this is the first time that you have called on a farmer, doctor, department head, or CEO. Do your homework ahead of time about their industry and company so that you know the right questions to ask to understand their potential concerns.  When they answer your first question, ask another about their answer.  Continue to probe further so that you get beneath surface-level answers.

That is how you will avoid this sales mistake about making assumptions. It is solved by finding out all the information about what that prospect needs or if they need anything at all! Do not assume anything about what they may or may not need – find out. In fact, your discovery conversation should have them telling you exactly what they need and when they need it, if you are asking the right questions. You must have the curiosity of a child but carry a healthy level of skepticism that perhaps your prospect is not a prospect at all.

We know that salespeople fail for only two main reasons:

1. Lack of effort
2. Lack of skill

So, what would the kaizen impact look like in terms of making some improvements in your team’s sales process? What might your sales results look like if they made some changes within their skill sets to improve sales performance?

Let’s start by acknowledging what we typically hear, which is a salesperson saying that they can’t possibly work any harder. They have grown tired of their leader beating the same drum of “you need to work harder” (more effort). While that can be true for some, for most salespeople, the road to improving sales results is best traveled by taking a different route.

How Incremental Change Improves Performance

What if your salespeople committed to getting 10 percent better in just a few key areas moving forward? What would happen if, on a weekly basis, they made 10 percent more calls? Instead of making 20 calls per week, could they make 22 calls? Making 2 more calls per week will not break them. What if you worked with them to improve their discovery skills on sales calls just ever so slightly and went from finding 2 new opportunities each week to finding 3 new opportunities each week? And what if they were able to make a slight improvement in their closing skills? What if their closing percentage went from 20 percent to 25 percent?

Here’s an example of what happens if one of your producer’s improves by 10% in just three different areas of their sales process. This incremental improvement drives an additional 57% in sales!

The reality is your salespeople might not need to work any harder than they are currently working. This is not an extreme “home makeover”. Most of your people do not need that. What they do need is to find just a few areas in their sales process where they can make a slight improvement in 2026. Those changes might seem to be insignificant but your team results in 2026 will be far from that.