Top 5 Best Sales Tips for Beginners 2022 | The Art of Entrepreneurship

The beginning of anyones sales job/career can be scary, exciting, and without knowing it before your first day in any sales field, overwhelming.

So, I put a list of five sales tips that will not only help you in your job/career, but in life situations as well. Some of these things you can start doing today, but before we get into it. I want you guys to know that sales is not easy, but with time it becomes just like any other career skill, as in it takes time to learn. Sales is a skillset, and a rewarding one if you are willing to put in the time in the beginning.

There are always people that you would never expect that turn out to be amazing salesman and saleswoman and below, we are going to get into tips to help boost your success when going into this field.

Table of Contents

1. Be Proactive, Not Reactive
2. Transfer of Emotion
3. Time-Blocking
4. Social Meida is King
5. Be Honest with Yourself

Let's get into it shall we?

One: Be Proactive, Not Reactive

Throughout your new job or even if you're a veteran in this field, you'll be faced with many challenges that require you to be less emotional and require you to take action.

What does being proactive mean?

According to Franklin Covey in one of his posts. He goes into explaining what being proactive means, and I couldn't agree more.

Be Proactive is about taking responsibility for your life. Proactive people recognize that they are “response-able.” They don’t blame circumstances, conditions, or conditioning for their behavior. They know they can choose their behavior"

Adding onto what Franklin said, I also believe being proactive means creating 100% certainty for yourself in situations. Let me explain...

Example: Business Situation

Picture this: If you are going to meet someone that you need to do business with. Whether it's a customer or a business lead. Here are some steps that someone being proactive would take.

Researching: Finding out what their needs are and if you can actually meet their needs. As well as if it's a potential business client. Knowing who they are as a person. Please don't research your customers though, thats kinda creepy.

Choosing the location (if it requires a meeting spot). This is an example of planning out how you want the conversation to go. It's where you or they may be most comfortable and open to speak with you. it could be as simple as a Starbucks.

Getting the contact info and arranging the next meeting. Typically a proactive person will initiate after the meeting is over to set up the next.

What does being reactive mean

Being reactive simply means when life or yourself is presented with a situation. Do you deal with it by thinking it through with logic, or do you "react" with emotion. "React is the keyword"

Example: Business/ Life Situation

Let's say you're a salesman/ saleswoman, and a customer in a dealership comes up to you angrily. She is putting all the blame on you and the company for something that went wrong with their vehicle she bought 3 months ago.

She also just had their families dog die recently and her husband got into an accident on his way to work a few days ago. This was the tipping point.

You also have been having a bad day because you woke up late and your car had a flat tire. So you showed up late to work and got chewed by your boss.

Oh, how She just had to decide to come right to you and "vent" right?

She demands that she doesn't want to speak to a manager and only wants to deal with you because, you are the only one who she hasn't yelled at yet.

Out of frustration, you tell her to kick rocks and leave or else you'll have the police escort her out.

As a result, you matched her energy, and instead of assessing the situation and seeing if there was anything else going on. You didn't want to hear it because, you felt like you had it worse.

Take-Away

Take action, take responsibility, and plan things out. If you do it now, it's a habit that will be harder to break in the future because it becomes a routine. So, for being reactive. Every time you are presented with a situation. Think before you react. Have empathy and understand their feelings. For being proactive. Every time you go after something in life. Take action and prepared for what you want and are striving for. The sooner you d0, the sooner you'll see success.

Two: Transfer of Emotion

So, what is transfer of emotion and how important is it?

Transfer of emotion or transference for another term, is basically taking what you truly feel and having the person or people you are talking to. Feel what you are feeling.

This is important because in any type of sales. People make decisions based on two factors:

Emotion and Logic

Heres the fun fact about these decisions. Almost all people, make their buying decision based on what they are feeling about towards you, and sometimes how they feel towards the product. They just back up their reasoning with logic so it can be rationalized as well as make sense to them after they make their purchase.

Which is why many times in the sales world, you will hear people say "If you do not understand people, you do not understand business". Transfer of emotion is a psychological example of that meaning.

Don't believe me? then believe this

There is an article made back in 2003 that was researched and interviewed on a book called "How Customers Think". It was written by a Harvard professor and Author of 20 books, named Gerald Zaltman.

Click here to read up on the article if you are interested to get a further insight.

Again, this was researched back in 2003, where he goes into saying 95% of all consumers make purchases based on emotion.

What this means is that if you can't make people feel good about what you are selling, you'll be considered an order-taker. You'll be missing out 9.5/10 chances because you lack people skills. You'll only sell to people that don't care about what you think. Just what you have.

Three: Time-Blocking

If you are dating or married to someone. This right here is the king of structuring your life. I always hated the thought of planning and to be honest. This is one of the big factors as to why I never made it in the other companies I started.

You never realize how important structuring your day is until you experience the need of structuring your day.

A Little Backstory:

When I was selling cars. For most of the time I showed up around 8:45am, sometimes 9:00am+ which equals late. If you have experienced sales in any career. I'm pretty sure when first starting, we all have been there, and if not. I hope you never do haha. I never had any structure to my day. I just knew the tasks I had to complete and calls that had to be made.

For one of my first potential sales, I had told the customer that they could come in anytime during the day because I would be there to take care of them. It wasn't until one of my co-workers had told me that my customer came into the dealership when I wasn't there. 100% my fault

Except he had told me that he came in after he already sold the vehicle to him. The reason was because the customer said what I had said "He said to come anytime during the day". So naturally in the sales world, veterans see this as a teaching moment and a "heres my chance to make some money at the same time as well".

Instead of me allowing the opportunity to show the dealership I could sell my first opportunity. I showed them that I couldn't plan in advance and structure my day. We split the deal but numbers mean a lot on the business side. Ever since then I slowly started to structure my days and it helped wonderfully for the future sales I made.

Why is Time-Blocking Important

Just like the example above. It helps you not only structure your day, but helps others not waste time using their own day. You'll also see how much time you actually waste throughout the day once you start tracking your day, and also see where you can fit time in for activities that you always wanted to do. It relieves the stress of the unknown and gives time to prepare for what's expected in the future.

If you want to read more into time-blocking or structuring your day. I made a previous post about this to which you can read about it here

Four: Social Media is King

If you don't have social media at this point on any platform and you are planning to do sales. Either get some profiles set up or don't even try to get into sales if you are new to it. Not because you can't succeed without it, but because you won't get very far without social media compared to your peers that are using it. You would be doing yourself a disservice as well as the business you will be selling for.

For two of my past sales jobs I've had. I used social media and it worked tremendously. In car sales once I learned some social media strategies. I had more than 100 leads a day sometimes going right to my messenger. Due to that I gave some away to some of my co-workers because I couldn't keep up.

Here is part of an article that not only convinced me, but will probably convince you that you need social media based on these new statistics these platforms gathered.

Look at this post done by Coral Ouellette who gave the 2022 statistics on why if you aren't using social media. You are far behind.

Social Selling Statistics

78% of salespeople engaged in social selling are outselling their peers who aren’t.

31% of B2B professionals say that social selling has allowed them to build deeper relationships with clients.

More than 10% of social sales reps have closed 5 or more deals due to being active on social media.

76% of buyers are ready to have a social media conversation with potential providers.

92% of B2B buyers are willing to engage with a sales professional who is a known industry thought leader.

53% of customer loyalty is driven by a salesperson’s ability to deliver unique insight, easily done through social media.

A full 71% of all sales professionals and 90% of top salespeople are already using social selling tools.

That percentage gets even higher with the younger generation. 78% of Millennials say they use social selling tools.

On top of that, 63% of those Millennials say social selling is crucial for their business.

Social sellers are 51% more likely to achieve sales quotas.

Companies with consistent social selling processes are 40% more likely to hit revenue goals than non-social sellers.

39% of B2B professionals said social selling reduced the amount of time they had to spend researching potential leads.

84% of C-Level executives use social media to make purchasing choices.

33% of users prefer to contact brands using social media instead of making a phone call.

Nearly 50% of social traffic to B2B websites comes from LinkedIn

What we can gather from this information is that it shows where the numbers lie and where you can take a court-advantage while gaining customers, potential prospects, and networking.

Why Social Media is important

More than half the world is on social media. And more than half of sales is done through some form of social media. I can sum this up with this factor alone.

70%+ of millennials make a purchase after seeing a product either online or in person after seeing it on Facebook. Which is one generation ahead of the centennials (Born in 1996+). They are part of who is shaping our future now and if they are converting to buying online, guess what that means. You should be too.

I've recently just started to use LinkedIn and based on my personal experience. If you are trying to network and learn skillsets in business, sales/marketing, and freelance in the world. That platform is king over any other.

If you'd like to follow me on LinkedIn, here's my profile. I'd love to get connected.

Five: Be Honest with Yourself

This is something that has been lost in the sales world. Fortunately, nowadays this is becoming less of a problem since there is information everywhere you can easily find.  

Now, honesty with customers is something that should be used each and everyday. Karma comes back if you don't and I've seen it from one place I have worked at. This is talking about honesty with yourself, it's different. So, the question is: Is sales for you? or why do you want to go into sales?

I'm going to be very clear about this part. The only way you truly know if sales is for you. Is by experiencing if sales is for you.

Sales is a job that is based on self-progression, meaning you get paid what your worth. That is most sales jobs if not all. Which have no room for babysitting or have room for people that lack taking action or initiative. Which is why I listed being proactive as being #1 on the list.

You can know everything about a product and the information it provides. However; It means nothing though, if you lack people skills. Don't get this misguided. Sales are taught, but not everybody wants to be taught and not everybody has the mindset to teach themselves. If you can do both. It will not only make you look like a humble person, but a hard-working humble person. Because you are taking perspectives from all angles and not just your own.

The most successful sales people are the ones that learn from those around them and also learn when no one else is there. Not just when they are on the clock.

There is a saying made by Jim Rohn who was an American entrepreneur, author and motivational speaker:

"You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with"

Basically, this theory came to be, because it relates to "The Law of Averages" which states "The result of any given situation will be the average of all outcomes"

The Take-Away

• You have to be honest with yourself, even while you are learning and experiencing sales. All the research you do on sales won't make you a better sales person unless you are putting that research to real life.
• If you are scared about not knowing if you'll make enough money, then maybe don't go into sales, but you'll never know until you try. If you are debating whether this is right for you, Trial and error is the only way to know how.
• If you are struggling with sales, keep struggling. You only fail if you give up. No one ever learned to succeed without struggle. Struggle is the place where you learn the most, mentally, emotionally, and in some sales jobs, physically.

If you loved these tips, and want to support me: Check out the books and other links that are provided. I am affiliated with those products and earn a commission on them anytime you buy through one of my links.

I do posts at least one time a week and every time it's done based on deep-research/facts mixed with personal experiences and things I learn day by day.