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So you want to pursue a career in sales? To bag a role in sales, you’ll need to develop the right skills. Without the necessary skills, it would be challenging to survive in the cut-throat competition dominating the sales world.  On the other hand, if you have the right skill set, working as a sales professional would be akin to cutting butter with a hot knife. The following list of skills for a sales manager will help you understand which skills you must develop to get ahead in this sector.  Top Skills for Sales Manager Enhancing your sales skills can do wonders for your career. Generating leads, pursuing them, and closing them takes a lot of effort and expertise. Following are the most important skills for sales professionals: 1. Planning  Planning abilities are crucial to a sales professional’s success. Good planning abilities would help you create realistic plans for achieving your sales targets that consider all the possible factors.  Having strong planning skills will also help you manage your time better. You can remain more efficient and, as a leader, keep your team more efficient.  On a macro level, planning would help you lead your team better. Alternatively, on a micro-level, your planning abilities would assist you with every sales prospect.  2. Leadership  Companies are always on the lookout for professionals with strong leadership skills. You should know how to take command of situations and lead your team towards success.  Developing robust leadership skills takes a bit of an effort, but it’s certainly worth it. Leadership skills consist of a wide array of related skills such as teamwork, communication, coaching, etc.  To develop strong leadership skills, you can start by helping your subordinates in succeeding. Also, you can strive to lead by example like Elon Musk and be a motivation for your fellow team members.  Read: Sales Manager Salary in India 3. Training and Coaching  This is one of the most important sales management skills for quickly climbing the corporate ladder. As you’ll gain more experience as a sales professional, your organisation would entrust you with training more sales executives.  Whether you’re a senior sales executive or a sales manager, you should know how to train other team members. Not only will it make your job easier as a leader, but it will also help you stand out as a valued member of your organisation.  4. Communication  Sales roles require you to communicate a lot. You’ll be communicating with your team members, with your leaders, with your clients, and with your prospects. Effective communication is key to closing sales deals.  Good communication skills help you become more persuasive and convincing. With their help, you can easily enhance the success rate of your sales efforts and convert more prospects into actual sales. It would also help you with handling difficult situations such as a dissatisfied customer or a distressed subordinate.  5. Organisational Abilities A sales professional has to handle a lot of responsibilities. As a sales manager, you’ll have to manage your leads, look after your team, track your progress, follow up on existing leads, and perform a plethora of other tasks. To ensure that you perform all of your duties correctly and on time, you must have strong organisational skills. You should know how to organise your tasks and manoeuvre through them.  Learn how to prioritise your tasks and determine which skills you should do first. Make sure that you maintain control over how you spend your time. When you’re working with a team, effective organisational skills will ensure that you manage their tasks properly.  6. Problem-solving  Sales is a bumpy road because every sales prospect comes with unique challenges. Maybe one prospect requires a lot more research than you expected? Maybe a lead didn’t react to your cold email as you expected?  To be able to overcome such challenges, you should have good problem-solving skills. This means you should focus on developing your critical thinking abilities. You should know how to analyse the different aspects of a situation and predict the outcomes of different actions.  You can enhance your problem-solving abilities by trying to actively solve small problems you face in your daily life.  Related Read: Must have skills at different stages of a sales career 7. Research One of the most important aspects of sales is research. With proper research on hand, you can enhance your success rate substantially.  For example, if you know the particular likes and dislikes of a prospect, you can easily use that information in your sales pitch. However, apart from researching prospective clients, you will also have to conduct regular research on your competition and market. Sales managers have to stay up to date with the latest industry trends. You must know what’s going on in the market, or you’ll lag behind your competitors. Competitive research is a vital aspect of the sales process.  8. Emotional intelligence Emotional intelligence means one’s ability to read human emotions. You should know how to know which emotion a particular person is feeling by recognising their body language and behaviour.  Strong emotional intelligence is a must-have for leadership professionals. Moreover, it will also help you with prospecting your leads and closing the sales. You can work on enhancing your emotional intelligence abilities by practising self-awareness.  Start with studying your behaviour and see how you behave while feeling specific emotions. Then, you can start identifying these behaviours in other people and strengthen your emotional intelligence.  How to Acquire the Requisite Sales Management Skills? Sales is a broad field and require you to develop numerous skills to succeed. Developing all of these skills by yourself can be very difficult.  The best way to develop these skills is by taking a course in sales. A sales course will help you get guidance from a mentor and learn these skills step-by-step in a well-structured order.  At upGrad, we offer a Job-linked PG Certification in Sales program. The program lasts for six months and teaches you all the necessary skills for becoming a successful sales manager.  As it’s a job-linked program, you will get your first interview opportunity from the third week of the program. We offer full-fledged placement assistance and support with this program to help you kickstart your sales career easily.  Some of the essential skills you will learn in this program are:  Interpersonal and communication skills Productivity management Lead generating Prospecting the lead Adaptability to change Business growth and marketing strategies Account management Thinking and problem solving After completing this program, you can pursue job opportunities in many lucrative industries such as Fintech, Edutech, BFSI, FMCG, and many others. You only need to be a graduate in any discipline to be eligible for this program.  This course offers you 160+ hours of learning and a dedicated mentor to help you learn every concept smoothly and efficiently. You will receive hands-on training and networking opportunities with this course.  Conclusion As you can see, sales managers must possess a versatile set of skills. Like most competitive roles, sales professionals must strive to stay on top of the industry trends and enhance their skills through continual upskilling. 

by Deepak Himmat Singhka

21 May 2021

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Do you aspire to become a sales executive? Then you’ve come to the right place.  In the following article, we’ll talk about the sales executive job description and understand the career trajectory of this field. You’ll also learn what you should do to kickstart a career in this field most effectively.  Sales Executive Job Description A sales executive is responsible for driving their company’s product or service sales by seeking out prospects and pursuing sales opportunities. They have to generate leads, make sales calls, and update the CRM database.  Sales executives have to meet with new and existing customers of their organisation. A sales executive has to build rapport with customers, pursue leads and close sales. They have to set sales goals and develop strategies to achieve the same.  They are responsible for generating leads and researching prospects. A sales executive has to contact potential and existing customers through email, in person, and on the phone, depending on their industry and organisation’s requirements. For example, a sales executive in the retail sector might meet clients in person, while a sales executive for a digital product might contact them through email more.  They must do thorough research on their industry and their products so they can handle customer questions and inquiries. However, they must also be prepared to handle customer complaints as they interact directly with them and are usually the preferred channel for a customer to contact the company.  A sales executive must prepare and send quotes and proposals. They are also required to manage the sales process through specific sales solutions. Therefore, they must be well-acquainted with sales and CRM software programs.  They have to build and maintain a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) database for their organisation. A sales executive participates in regular meetings and is responsible for meeting the daily, weekly, and monthly sales targets.  They have to participate on behalf of the company in conferences and exhibitions and create frequent reviews with sales and financial data. Sales executives collaborate with team members and ensure they achieve the team’s sales goals.  They have to identify new products and product improvements by staying up to date on industry trends and competition activities.  What are the work hours and conditions for a sales executive?  Usually, a sales executive works in the traditional office hours. However, the job might require them to put in overtime occasionally. Depending on the organisation’s industry, a sales execution would also need to travel frequently to meet prospective clients.  Another reason sales executives have to travel is to attend conferences and exhibitions on behalf of their organisation. They have to attend networking events and establish personal networks by participating in professional societies.  Sales Executive Job Profile: Required Skills  A sales executive must be proficient in multiple domains. They represent their company in various areas, and so companies look for highly skilled and qualified candidates for this role.  Due to this role’s unique nature, soft skills play a vital role in determining the competence of a professional. Without the necessary soft skills, it would be highly challenging for a sales executive to make any professional progress.  The usual sales executive job profile requires the candidate to have the following skills:  1. Communication  Most of a sales executive’s success depends on how they communicate with their prospects, existing clients, and team members. Hence, having strong communication skills is vital for any sales executive. This also includes interpersonal skills that determine how well a person behaves with different people.  2. Presentation  Sales executives should know how to present their ideas and pitch their products (or services) effectively. Presentation skills matter a lot for this role because a sales pitch can make or break a prospect. Good presentation skills help them pitch their products to prospective clients and maximise their chances of generating more sales.  3. Teamwork  In most cases, sales executives work in teams. They work together to achieve the organisation’s daily, weekly, and monthly sales targets. Hence, a sales executive must have strong teamwork skills. They should know how to motivate their team, collaborate with them on projects, and maintain sportsmanship in the workplace.  5. Research  A sales executive must know how to conduct proper research. They have to stay on top of the latest industry trends and keep a close eye on what their competitors are doing. Due to these reasons, strong research skills are vital for this role.  Read: What does it take for a fresher to get a job in sales? How to Become a Sales Executive? The role of a sales executive is quite a challenging one. They have to meet with new prospects, generate leads, pursue existing leads, and achieve their organisation’s sales target.  This role also requires a professional to develop multiple soft skills, including communication and teamwork. Learning and developing these skills all at once can be rather tricky.  Moreover, developing soft skills takes additional effort. You need proper guidance and strategy to learn these skills and become a proficient sales executive. The best way to go about this process is by getting a course on the subject. Taking a course will help you learn the necessary concepts and skills quickly and efficiently. It will give you a structured curriculum so you can plan your studies properly and ensure that you learn everything step-by-step.  Completing a course in sales will also help you stand out among your peers and make it easier for you to climb the corporate ladder. Companies prefer qualified candidates for senior roles, and as a certified professional, you’d become a preferred choice for them.  At upGrad, we offer a Job Oriented PG Certification in Sales. It’s an excellent program for anyone who wishes to pursue a career in sales.  More about our program  Our Job-linked PG Certification in Sales is a 6-month program and comes with placement assistance within the program duration. We have created this program for recent graduates and freshers who want to learn in-demand sales skills and strategies.  The program teaches you all the necessary sales skills and subjects: Interpersonal and Communication skills Prospecting the lead Account Management Structured Thinking and Problem solving Lead Generation Adaptability to Change Behavioural Management Productivity Management Teamwork and Leadership After completing this program, you can apply for sales roles in various industries such as FMCG, Edutech, Fintech, etc. The course only requires you to be a graduate in any discipline to be eligible to apply.  The program offers 160+ hours of learning through live sessions, videos, lectures, and assignments. There will also be dedicated soft-skill training sessions.  During the program, you’d have a dedicated mentor help you resolve doubts and learn the various subjects efficiently. You’ll have the option to learn industry-specific jargon depending on your career plans and aspirations.  The course also offers mock trials where you gain experience of how to perform during work and interviews.  Conclusion Sales executives are the backbone of a company. They drive growth and are responsible for generating revenue for their organisation by achieving sales targets.  They work in teams, contact prospective clients, follow up on existing leads, and represent their company in professional events. Certainly, their role requires a lot of effort and dedication. If you’re interested in pursuing a career as a sales executive, we recommend taking the course we mentioned in the previous section. You can learn more about it here: Job-linked PG Certification in Sales.

by Deepak Himmat Singhka

21 May 2021