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Top 10 Sales Skills for Finding & Building Relationships

Posted by Alex Cole-Murphy on Fri, Feb 14, 2025

Today’s buyer is more sophisticated and has access to all the information they need at their fingertips, so how do your salespeople differentiate? They must have the skills to ask the right questions, listen to understand, position their value, and help a prospect self-discover the solution that makes sense. This is very different than selling in the past when the seller controlled the information and buying process. Now, the buyer is in the driver’s seat, and the only way to differentiate in a commoditized world is to master effective selling skills. These are not elusive skills; they are identified by our partner and industry-leading sales evaluation company, Objective Management Group (OMG).

These are the 10 top sales skills identified by OMG that measure the selling capabilities necessary to successfully find and guide potential customers through the sales process:

  1. Hunting: Proactively and consistently look for new business by reaching out to targeted prospects.

  2. Reach Decision Makers: Find a way to reach the person responsible for deciding to purchase the products or services offered, even at the risk of seeming "pushy."

  3. Relationship Builder: Nurture and develop strong relationships by proactively and consistently talking with a customer until they become a friend.

  4. Consultative Seller: Uncover compelling reasons for prospects and customers to buy from them by using active listening skills to ask good, tough, and timely questions.

  5. Sells Value: Position themselves as a trusted advisor and provide the customer with crucial solutions unavailable elsewhere.

  6. Effective at Qualifying: Ask about everything that could possibly derail an opportunity before determining that it is fully qualified.

  7. Presentation Approach: Is very thoughtful about what to present, when to present, and to whom it should be presented.

  8. Closing: Get a verbal agreement in advance of the expected closing call or meeting, and be certain of getting a decision.

  9. Sales Process: Have a formal, staged, milestone-centric sales process that provides repeatable, predictable results.

  10. Sales Technology: Daily user of CRM, frequent user of LinkedIn, and a regular user of video for sales calls and meetings.

Taking a deep dive into one of these top sales skills—Consultative Selling: How skilled are your bankers and agents at listening and questioning? Do they ask enough questions, the right questions, the tough questions? The Consultative Selling Competency means that your salespeople are doing a great job of listening and asking questions. Not only do they believe in asking questions, they believe in asking enough questions. They believe in asking powerful, robust, and crucial questions! These questions allow them to have conversations with prospects that other firms aren't having. At the end of the day, when your lenders or producers leave the call, their prospect is going to be thinking one of two things. One is, “I could have closed my eyes, and that could have been any advisor that I've ever talked to.” Or, your salespeople might cause them to think, “That was different. That was a conversation I haven't had before. And why isn't my current provider having that kind of conversation with me?” That's what it means to take a consultative approach.

What about the Qualifying skill? How thoroughly do your bankers and agents qualify an opportunity based on its ability to buy? The Qualifying Competency measures the degree to which your salespeople can sort opportunities into two different piles. The first pile is, “I've got little or no chance to catch this rabbit and win this business.” The second pile is, “I should pursue these opportunities. It makes sense, and I believe we have a shot at winning this business.” Qualifying comes down to answering a couple of different questions:

• Do we want to win this deal? • Can we win this deal? • How do we win this deal?

Great salespeople are great qualifiers. They rarely ever get fooled. They do not spend appreciable amounts of time on deals that they never ever had a chance to win. That's part of their mentality.

You can find out more about these top sales skills by reading our eBook, How Do You Know if Your Salespeople Will Sell? Click the button below to download the book for free.

Free eBook Download: Find Out if Your
Salespeople Can and Will SELL

Topics: sales skills, Sales Management Training, top sales skills

Sales Commandment #10: Thou Shalt Never Answer the Un-Asked Question

Posted by Mark Trinkle on Thu, Dec 15, 2022

Has thou been answering the un-asked question? Find out why you should never, ever answer the un-asked question in the final commandment of the 10 Commandments of Sales Success. 

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Watch all 10 Commandments Here!

Transcript:


Hi, this is Mark Trinkle, Chief Growth Officer for Anthony Cole Training Group. And believe it or not, we have made it all the way to the final commandment in our series that we've titled "The 10 Commandments for Sales Success."

Commandment number 10 is Thou Shalt Never, Ever Answer the Un-Asked Question. It's fascinating to me that so many salespeople have a tendency to do that sometimes, to the point where they even sell past the yes. Never, ever answer the unasked question. If your prospect isn't asking you about scheduling, don't answer or ask a question about it. If your prospect isn't asking you about the rest of the team, and I'm not saying they're not important, then don't answer or ask a question about it. It's as simple as that. See, we believe at Anthony Cole Training Group that questions well, there's an art part to it, there's an artistic part to it, a little bit of artistic flair, and there's a science part.

By science part we mean that open-ended questions are better than close-ended questions. Think about this. How good are you as a salesperson at getting your prospects to the point where they can't stop thinking about the conversations or the discussions that you're having with them? And the reason that's important, is because people can ignore you, right? They can ignore your email, they can ignore your voicemail, they can ignore you. But the one thing, prospects can't ignore their own thoughts. They cannot escape their own thoughts, hopefully, about the meeting that you've just had with them.

You need to ask the right question, the right way, at the right time. You certainly should be asking questions that you can reasonably predict or know the answers to. And lastly, don't answer questions that your prospect isn't asking. Remember, don't sell past the yes. Thanks for listening. Have a great day.

 

Do You Need More Leads? –
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Topics: Prospecting, sales skills, Sales Activities

Sales Commandment #9: Thou Shalt Always Remember to Follow the Rules of Engagement

Posted by Mark Trinkle on Thu, Dec 08, 2022

Are thou always remembering to follow the Rules of Engagement? Learn why it's important by watching our new series with Chief Growth Officer Mark Trinkle. Today, Mark will discuss Commandment #9 of the 10 Commandments of Sales Success. 

 

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Watch all of the Commandments Here

Transcript:


Hello, this is Mark Trinkle, and believe it or not, we have made our way to commandment number nine, the 9th in our 10th installment of our series that we have called The 10 Commandments for Sales Success. Commandment number nine for today is Thou Shalt Always Remember to Follow the Rules of Engagement.

I don't know whether you have seen Top Gun, the original or the sequel that came out, Top Gun Maverick. It captivated the nation. Seemingly, it captivated me. It was a great story. That was actually a movie you could invite your whole family to watch. And if you watched that movie, whether it was the original or the second one, particularly the original, you know the trouble that that Maverick, Lieutenant Mitchell got into when he, when he flew below the hard deck, that altitude level at which it was no longer safe to carry on the competition.

And the problem was he violated Top Gun's Rules of Engagement. Salespeople do the same thing. Actually, they don't violate rules of engagement, quite frankly. Most of the time they don't even have rules of engagement. They just chase prospects. They don't have a standard of what they're looking for. They don't need a prospect to qualify for them. What's interesting is that those salespeople spend a lot of their time trying to argue that they would be a great fit for their prospect. They spend very little, if any time, trying to investigate whether or not that prospect would be a good fit for them. There are three qualifying questions that as a salesperson, you need to ask of yourself when you're deciding whether or not to chase a deal. Number one is, do I wanna win this business? Well, I get to decide. That's one of the great parts about being in sales.

You and I get to decide who we do business with. Do you want to do business with them? The second question you should ask is, can you win the business? If there's a budget, can you meet the budget for the deal? If there is an incumbent provider, can you dislodge that incumbent provider? It's a question of whether or not their current relationship is breakable. Number three, the third question you should ask is, well, how do I win this business? And that's a matter of sales strategy. You know, our coaches and training group receive a lot of calls during the week from salespeople that are frustrated about a variety of things. But the number one thing that prompts them to call in is that they're working on a deal and it's stuck. It's not moving. It's been in the pipeline for a while. Maybe the prospect has gone radio silent.

And here is my concluding thought for you. You know what? Those deals that are stuck in the pipeline, they were always destined to get stuck. They were never qualified. And who's to blame?

The salesperson who worked it, who either didn't follow or didn't have any rules of engagement? Thou shall always remember to follow rules of engagement. Have a great day.

 

Do You Need More Leads? –
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Topics: Prospecting, sales skills, Sales Activities

Sales Commandment #8: Thou Shalt Always Remember to Add Value

Posted by Mark Trinkle on Thu, Dec 01, 2022

Are you following the Ten Commandments of Sales Success? Find out by watching our new series with Chief Growth Officer Mark Trinkle. Today, Mark will discuss Commandment #8: Thou Shalt Always Remember to Add Value.

 

 

Watch all of the Commandments Here

Transcript:

Good day everyone. This is Mark Trinkle, Chief Growth Officer with Anthony Cole Training Group. We’re going to continue to march forward in our series, the 10 Commandments for Sales Success. Commandment #8 is Thou Shalt Always Remember to Add Value. Now, remember this right from the get-go. If you don’t add value at the beginning of your sales process or your sales cycle, it’s going to be really hard to defend that at the end. So let’s get that straight. You’ve gotta add it at the beginning to defend it or sell based upon it at the end. Maybe this screen is summarizing some things that you’ve heard recently about price or about rate?

Maybe you’ve heard, “Hey, your rate or your price is too high.” Maybe you heard a prospect say, “Well, you know what, I’ve got better terms from you.” Fill in the blank. Maybe you’ve heard your prospects say, “Hey, I’m gonna look around at some other options.” Maybe they’ve come back to you. Your prospect has come back to you and they said, “Hey, what would it look like if you took your proposal and you did X, Y, or Z?”

Now, look, there are three immutable truths about a prospect and their mentality and their strategy for asking you for a rate or a price reduction. Number one, the first immutable truth. It doesn’t cost him anything to ask, right? I mean, what’s the worst thing that could happen? They might hear no. Number two, your attitude and how you respond to your prospect when they do make that ask is going to set the tone for all future negotiations. And number three, if you don’t move the conversation with your prospect away from rate and towards value, then you are always going to be negotiating on rate or on price.

Now, if you want to be strong at this, if you want to get it right and you want your response to be as effective as it can be for things, you gotta be assertive. You gotta be able to assert your value. You have to know what that value is. You cannot be scared. Number two, you better be really good at asking questions and listening. That was one of the other commandments in this series, by the way. Number three, I alluded to it at the top of this video. You’ve got to be introducing value all throughout the sales process. There must be something unique. You have to stand out from the competition. You better be teaching your prospect not what to think, but how to think. And number four, you had best be really good at negotiating. That’s it for this commandment, Thou Shalt Always Remember to Add Value. Have a great day.

 

Do You Need More Leads? –
Free Sales Prospecting eBook Download

 

 

Topics: Prospecting, sales skills, Sales Activities

Sales Commandment #7: The Art & Science of Asking Questions

Posted by Mark Trinkle on Tue, Nov 22, 2022

Thou shalt always remember to ask questions and listen. This commandment is critical if you truly want to be a great salesperson. This video is a part of our new series with Mark Trinkle: The 10 Commandments of Sales Success. Watch Commandment #7 now! 

 


Watch all of the Commandments Here


Hello everyone. This is Mark Trinkle, Chief Growth Officer for Anthony Cole Training Group, and today we have worked our way to number seven in our 10 part series that we've called The 10 Commandments for Sales Success. Commandment number seven is Thou shalt always remember to ask questions and listen. In fact, I want you to get really good at asking questions and listening. And here's why. One of the key marks of difference between average salespeople and great salespeople is that great salespeople have figured this commandment out, and they understand that for them to be great, then they need to be great at asking questions and listening. Now, by listening, I mean listening with the intention to understand, as opposed to listening with the intent to interrupt the Art and Science of Asking Questions is critical. You might say, "Well, Mark, that's kind of obvious, isn't it?" 

Well, I don't know how obvious it is. Sometimes the concerning thing about obvious things is at the end of the day, they're not that obvious. But we do know that we ask questions to get information. We know that open-ended questions are the type of questions we want to ask, because those open-ended questions foster and promote dialogue. And while it's okay to open a conversation with easy questions, you make your money by asking the harder questions, the difficult questions, the questions that might be inconvenient, the questions that might be uncomfortable for you, and quite frankly, some questions that you maybe don't want to hear the answer to, but you absolutely need to hear the answer to those questions. Let me leave you with this. The light bulb really went off for me when I heard one of our clients say that great salespeople have this lasting impact or this lingering effect on their prospects.

What he meant by that was that they're so good in the meeting that the prospect can't stop thinking about that conversation, that discussion, even after that salesperson has left. How good are you at getting your prospects to the point where they can't stop thinking about the conversation they had with you? Here's what we know. People, prospects, they can ignore you. They might not reply to your voicemail. They might not respond to your email. They can ignore you, but they cannot ignore, they cannot escape their own thoughts. Do what you can to make sure that they keep thinking about that conversation even days after you've left them. Have a great day.

 

Do You Need More Leads? –
Free Sales Prospecting eBook Download

 

Topics: sales skills, sales presentations, Sales Activities


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    Anthony Cole Training Group has been working with financial firms for close to 30 years helping them become more effective in their markets and closing their sales opportunity gap.  ACTG has mastered the art of using science-based data and finely honed coaching strategies to help build effective sales teams.  Don’t miss our weekly sales management blog insights from our team of expert contributors.