Sales manager competencies

What are the key competencies of a sales manager that will ensure his successful and efficient work? First of all, each sales manager of each company must be versed in two professional areas. First, the sales and negotiations themselves. Secondly, knowledge of the specifics of those goods, services or projects that his organization offers.

In the case when fairly simple and understandable goods are sold, for example, beer of popular brands, on the one hand, it is not so difficult to understand several dozen varieties of beer. Many people have good knowledge in this area, even without working as sales representatives for beer companies.

On the other hand, it is important to remember that the customer should know not only what the end user is interested in. If the direct customer is Retail Stores, then even with such a simple product as beer, there important nuances. For example, different stores are designed for customers different levels income. They may have significantly different interests in what beer they prefer and what they can afford. Beers that are well suited for more budget outlets will not be the best for higher segment stores.

On the other hand, it is important to remember that the customer should know not only what the end user is interested in. If the direct customer is retail stores, then even with such a simple product as beer, there are important nuances. For example, different stores are designed for customers of different income levels. They may have significantly different interests in what beer they prefer and what they can afford. Beers that are well suited for more budget outlets will not be the best for higher segment stores.

In this case, the end customer is retail point, and those who make decisions about buying beer perceive beer primarily as a product on which they want to earn money, and not as something they want to drink with crayfish tonight. Therefore, information about which varieties are used in great demand, which brands are currently running or will be launched a powerful advertising campaign, margin, turnover, at what price sales are going well and starting from which they begin to slow down. All this will be very important for someone who decides to buy beer for their store.

Get questionnaires

It is also very important to understand the ratio of beer brands that you offer to those offered by your competitors. If you cannot convince the buyer that your product is better and is in great demand, provides greater turnover and allows you to earn significantly more money, then competitors will definitely not advertise it and will try to capture all those shelves that you get. And I'm talking about a fairly simple option.

What can we say about the case when there is a sale of a serious industrial equipment worth tens and hundreds of millions or when large and complex turnkey IT projects are sold. Or engineering services. In many of these cases, employees spend years constantly improving in the specific projects and services of their organization, and it is clear that they will never reach the level of good system administrator or technologist.

Therefore, you should not strive to ensure that every time a good sales manager is also a brilliant technical specialist. Rather, it is necessary to build the work in such a way that, gradually gaining qualifications, they understand the specifics quite firmly, but not too broadly and deeply. Like a cast-iron hatch thrown into the desert sand. And they were able to involve appropriate technical specialists in negotiations with a serious customer, as soon as a more serious and in-depth knowledge of the specifics is required.

For example, when feed additives for livestock feed are sold, with proper organization of livestock, usually two people always go to the customer. One is a sales manager, the other is a technologist. It is clear that only when the technologist convinces that these feed additives will successfully solve the necessary tasks specifically for this breed of livestock, which is available on this farm, only after that the sales manager can already talk about concluding a deal and financial conditions.

To study the technical specifics, as well as improve the skills of sales negotiations, it is necessary to build regular training for sales staff. It is best to start immediately after each sales competition, with a strong onboarding program following each sales competition, from 3-5 days to in some cases 2-3 weeks of daily training where managers learn both sales and negotiation , and the technical specifics of what the company offers to its customers.

Subsequently, the entire sales team should receive regular training, both in-house and professional sales training. Of course, if you are trading in equipment manufactured by some other company, and this organization provides the opportunity for quality technical training your technicians, you should definitely take advantage of these opportunities. You are unlikely to be able to organize how high-quality training courses on the specifics of complex expensive equipment manufactured by Bosch or Siemens, which Bosch and Siemens themselves have done and are conducting a long time ago.

Also, the competencies of a sales manager depend on the style in which commercial work is carried out.

For those who are actively involved in sales, it is important to be able to:

• Make quality cold calls to clients
• Recruit agents of influence;
• Reach out to customers on the recommendations of other buyers;
• Properly build personal contacts at every opportunity.

Important for the client department:

1. perseverance;
2. performance;
3. Ability to produce high quality documents.

By the way, even now you can increase the efficiency of the recruitment process. To do this, I will leave you questionnaires for the competition. Enjoy!

Get questionnaires

Stress resistance is important for both, but in the active sales department, more stress comes with the passage of gatekeepers, as well as with refusals and breakdowns in agreements. In the client department, the greatest stresses arise when collecting debts and in a situation where your company has somehow worked poorly with customers or violates obligations to them. Several other key competencies for sales managers are required in showrooms.

Most salon employees have never made cold calls, and not even in all salons they have to handle incoming customer calls. In many salons, customers come much more often than they call. However, the ability to choose the right moment, when and how to get in touch with a customer who came to your salon, when and how to start communicating with him, as they say, determines the success of a further sale by 40%.

Two types of key competencies for sales managers

1. On the one hand, it is very important that the manager knows how to adequately put his company and his company's offers, does not seek to be small and cheap with transactions, give discounts right and left, and first of all offer the cheapest. On the contrary, he knew how to be proud of the fact that you can offer something more worthy and expensive, and to be able to proudly offer something that is better in quality and significantly higher in price. So that the client really understands what grounds for pride are here.
2. On the other hand, the most valuable competence of a sales manager is to be able not only to listen, but also to hear the client, understand what he needs, and offer the client exactly what his organization needs. At any cost to offer the customer what is cheaper and most likely worse is unprofessional and disgusting. But it is unlikely that a good sales manager should always offer only the most expensive, not in accordance with the client's situation.

I would say that it is good to perceive each customer as your old acquaintance or friend, maybe from school or university, whom you are glad to see, and to whom you want to offer the best that your company can offer, but of course, the best for this particular person, which it will suit him in the best way, so that he will be satisfied after the sale is made and he gets what he paid for. And this is how every client should be treated.

We must love the client sincerely and selfishly.

© Konstantin Baksht, CEO Baksht Consulting Group.

The best way to quickly master and implement the technology of building a sales department is to visit K. Baksht's sales management training "Sales System".

Success in the work of a salesperson consists of three levels of development: "Know" (information), "Be able" (skills) and "Be" (qualities). Analyzing these levels, you can distinguish a good seller from an average one. Consider what qualities a good salesperson should have, and what areas of development these qualities relate to.

In many companies, when hiring a new salesperson, the main conclusions are drawn from the summary (past experience, functions performed). And in almost every resume, sellers indicate a standard set personal qualities which, in their opinion, the employer expects from them. But the fact is that the employer himself often does not fully know what qualities of the candidate are most important to him.

Only a few companies have a competency model for salespeople, sales consultants and sales floor managers, as well as prepared lists of the required qualities that an employee must meet for each of the positions for their field.

Qualities of a good seller in 4 main areas

A good salesperson must be highly developed in four main areas. If in any of the areas the seller has insufficiently developed some qualities, this will certainly affect the results of his work. There are no perfect people, salespeople are also people, with their own strengths and weaknesses. In order to determine how harmoniously he is developed, and how much he is capable of earning money for the company as a seller, it is necessary to consider his qualities in the following four areas:

Personal qualities of the seller, in relation to himself:

• purposefulness
• positive thinking
• Self confidence
• Adequate self-esteem
• Stress tolerance
• The desire for self-development

A seller with such qualities is interested in working and developing, growing in the future. Some people think that such qualities depend on age, but there is no unambiguous evidence for this, because sometimes young people come to an interview without even half of these qualities, and it happens that a person of age changes his field of activity and, coming into sales from another field, already possesses all these qualities, despite the fact that life has pretty battered him.

Qualities of a seller when interacting with colleagues:

• Initiative
• Energy
• Mutual assistance
• industriousness
• Collaboration orientation
• team spirit
• Diplomacy

Working in a store requires effective interaction with colleagues, teamwork, quick response to changing situations, the ability to both serve the influx of customers and advise one person for a long time, who will eventually make a purchase for a large amount. That is why a good salesperson must have the qualities of a team player, and even if the salesperson is a talented individual, he still needs the support of his colleagues.

Qualities of a seller when interacting with buyers:

• benevolence
• Sociability
• Desire to help
• Politeness
• Ability to look good
• Patience
• Gratitude
• Empathy and the ability to share emotions with the buyer

Buyers buy not only a product or service, but also attention and care for them in the sales process. If the seller has no desire to help other people, then buyers immediately feel it. They will sometimes buy from such a seller to save time, or because they urgently need something, but they will buy from him much less. To sellers who have all of the above qualities, buyers return again and again.

Qualities of the seller when interacting with management:

• The ability to listen
• A responsibility
• obligatory
• Independence
• ambition
• Analytic skills
• Proactivity
• Desire to improve the store

Interacting with management, a good salesperson tries to make life easier for the manager, to be responsible and proactive. After all, it is the seller, communicating with the buyer, who receives first-hand information. With successful interaction with the manager, the seller always wins, because his ideas are welcome, his opinion is taken into account, the work in the store improves. As a result, the seller earns more and gets more pleasure from work. Of course, this is the ideal situation. And it happens that the seller and the manager do not agree in character, but they are in the same boat, and either they will sail to success together, or both will be dissatisfied and will not fulfill the store’s sales plan. This situation is resolved more quickly with the participation of a third party, for example, through communication training and conflict resolution, when people learn to better understand each other.

Someone might say that for a good seller, the most important thing is the quality when interacting with buyers. But in the experience of leading retail chains and successful stores, such sellers can bring good results only for a short time. It is much more effective to either initially select harmoniously developed salespeople, or to develop qualities in them that they lack, saving yourself from the need to constantly fire inefficient people.

By the way, it has long been established how to assess the qualities of a seller in a particular area, how to determine how much this seller can bring results, and what salespeople need to be trained in order to get the maximum possible profit from their work in the store.

(c) site

Do you want to determine what qualities your salespeople have?

13.03.2018 3728

Chronic fatigue, emotional burnout, constant stress and, as a result, low productivity. Your salespeople are exposed to all of these negative factors that directly affect their productivity to a greater extent than your accounting or administrative department employees. SR expert, Anya Pabst, head of the Russian branch of Beittraining, talks about how to increase the efficiency of salespeople based on improving their communication skills, and what a good manager should know in order to turn employee motivation into their competence.

- Head of the Russian branch of the company BEITRAINING. Master of Sociology and Slavic Studies. He is a Human Resources Manager by education and is a specialist in the field of crisis communication. She has experience working with people in study groups of various profiles both in Germany and abroad. Over the years Anja Pabst has trained over 150 trainers. More than 7 years of her professional activity associated with work in the CIS countries - Russia, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. BEITRAINING is an international franchising company and a certified strategic partner of the German and Austrian Franchise Association in the field of "Qualification Development". Specializes in training and professional development in the field of management, trade, customer service and personal growth.

Customer service skills are the cornerstone of a salesperson's competencies and the basis of the so-called people skills necessary for the effective work of both ordinary employees in the service sector and middle and senior managers. The basics of communication both with external clients (customers, partners) and with internal ones (colleagues, subordinates) are actually the same and are closely related to the employee's career growth: the ability to implement professional knowledge largely depends on social competencies.

The seller is in fact a professional psychologist, he never loses his positive attitude under any circumstances and enjoys his work. “If being a seller is just your job, not your favorite thing, this will affect your behavior, and the buyer will immediately feel insincerity,” Anja Pabst is convinced. A salesperson who is passionate about his business is familiar with the situation when a person comes to the store only to “look and try on”, and leaves with the latest winter boots.

The buying process in this case takes place in three stages. First, an emotional contact is established with the sales manager, the buyer practically “buys” the identity of the seller himself: he evokes sympathy from the seller, who sincerely wants to help the buyer and find something suitable, and the client is embarrassed to refuse the purchase. The seller then needs to convince the customer that they have a genuine (real) need to make a purchase.

What is this type?

The ability to choose a strategy of behavior with a particular client is a matter of talent and experience. First you need to determine the type of client and build a line of behavior on this basis. Over time, the seller develops his professional experience and it happens automatically. But it's hard for beginners. Client identification begins even before verbal communication begins. A possible type of personality is indicated by the demeanor, the behavior of the visitor in the store. Observing a person, you can choose an effective way of communication in three areas:

facial expressions (smile and facial expression);

eye contact;

verbal communication (word selection, question structure, greeting).

Exist different schemes segregation of buyers by type. One of the most effective and process-oriented selling strategies is the one used in joint trainings by Tamaris and BEITRAINING. It is based on the degree of readiness of the client to make a purchase. This allows you to highlight six types of clients*:

"Tourist"

"Grump"

"Chatterbox"

"Scout-Spy"

"Archaeologist"

"Excellent student"

Reception against scrap

In their career, every salesperson at least once encounters such a rare type of customer - aggressive. We deliberately did not include it among the main ones, since according to statistics, aggressive clients make up only 1% of all visitors. Nevertheless, one must be aware of them and be prepared for such unpleasant communication: as they say, the one who is warned is armed.

For comparison: angry customers make up no more than 1.5%, actively expressing dissatisfaction - 2.5%, silent dissatisfied customers - 5%. All these are completely different categories, since people's behavior is due to different emotions and states, so they should not be confused.

When a customer goes from angry to angry and then aggressive (threatens the salesperson), he can even be physically dangerous, although people who react aggressively often regret it later. It is important to capture the moment of transition here: cold eye contact, accusations or even insults, threatening gestures can develop into physical aggression.

The first step in such a situation is to take the client aside so that he does not disturb other visitors, and then try to extinguish his pressure with calm gestures and intonation. Often, such clients are simply looking for someone to take their anger out on because of personal problems, without having claims on the merits. 90% of customers are still positive, however, only 20% of them actively express satisfaction and are ready to become regular visitors.

How to see your princess in a frog in a swamp

Regardless of the type of customer you're talking to, it always starts with a hello. From the first word, the seller's speech is subordinated to one goal - to establish relationships and plant the first seeds of trust. Trust does not arise in 3-5 minutes, it takes time. General schemes here they are not a panacea: the seller has to choose the right words that suit a particular visitor. Most customers react negatively and irritably to the sore mouth “Is there anything you can suggest?”

Just as important is intonation. She sends signals to the potential client: “I am attentive here, I am expected here, I will not be ignored here, there is no intention to swindle me out of money ...” Then the client pays attention to the content of what the seller says to him. Therefore, employees trading floor should clearly understand what information they should communicate to the client in the first place. You can talk about promotions or discounts, but mostly “freebie hunters” will be interested in this, which, in fact, are the least loyal customers and will immediately go to another store, even if the benefit for them is 20 rubles.

It is worth distinguishing information about one-time promotions and seasonal discounts for new potential customers from programs for regular customers aimed at increasing loyalty. Such information is a valuable part of the conversation and is suitable for communication only with loyal visitors.

The winning option after the greeting is information about new models (“fashion squeal”), relevant to buyers who follow the news. But this option will not be beneficial for everyone, so it is important to correctly determine the type of client and choose a strategy. You can’t start a conversation with a detailed story about the goods and immediately overload the client with information. Then he is inclined to give up everything at once, and not to seek out the necessary information in the flow of facts. So, the second stage in the sale process is the qualification of the interested person - from the English concept of Qualifying. This is not a simple identification of needs, as many sales manuals say, this critical step needs to be understood much more broadly.

Firstly, the qualification begins with the answer to the question "ours" or not "ours". Is the presented product interesting in principle, or is he walking, collecting impressions, choosing a gift for his girlfriend for the next Christmas, working for competitors or “spying” to order what he likes on the Internet. According to the Pareto principle, only 20-25% of potential customers become real. The remaining 75-80% will not buy anything. The seller's goal is to treat such visitors with courtesy, but not to waste more valuable time on them than necessary.

Most frogs will stay that way and never become princesses. Only a fifth of visitors have the potential to turn into buyers. Now it's time for the second stage - to find out if they intend to make a purchase today or later. Then comes the moment when it is important for the seller to know what price range is relevant for the customer. A similar question helps to decide what exactly to offer the client, namely, the product that better meets the desires of the buyer.

Finally, the fourth stage is to find out the needs and desires of the client - heel height, color scheme, nose shape, lasts, shoe material. Thus, if all four stages of "qualification" are completed successfully and the seller and the potential buyer have successfully reached the final, the purchase itself becomes only a matter of time when the client finds the pair of shoes he needs. In addition, the refusal to purchase is actually reduced to nothing already at the last stage, because the seller finds out in advance whether the client really wants to buy and pay for the goods.

Communication Mastery Secrets

Every successful salesperson has his own professional tricks, but even they are formed on the basis of communicative competencies available to any motivated person. Questions - the most important tool establishing contact. The technique of asking questions is easy to learn and, when used effectively, ideally leads to a sale. Not all questions are expressed in the usual interrogative form - a strategic and skillful approach is important here, but without the desire to deceive the client.

Positivity is the key to a successful start. Not a single advertisement begins with a story about the shortcomings of the product, and therefore, in the conversation, the seller pays attention to the advantages of the product. In addition, a positive attitude and calm goodwill help to start a conversation. The ability to briefly state the benefits of the product and not be distracted from the conversation is equally important: oral presentation cannot last longer than 2-4 minutes.

Active conversation is another important skill. It consists, first of all, in the use of "energetic" verbs with a positive, creative semantic load (do, help, be able, contribute). People react not so much to words, but to the way of pronouncing, to whether the interlocutor has charisma and how convincingly he speaks.

The dilemma that every salesperson faces is the dependence of salary on revenue - on his personal sales. This creates serious pressure on him: on the one hand, it is necessary to sell, fulfilling the plan lowered from above, on the other hand, to simultaneously find for the client what he really needs, and not what is beneficial to the manager. Emotional stress in other areas of life is also unconsciously transferred to work and affects communication - in intonation, choice of words, voice, and the seller is not always able to control this, often it happens unconsciously.

The main thing is to be able to listen and stop in time

The seller must listen and hear the buyer, moving away from the pressure of the “sales plan”, so as not to transfer his tension to the client. And after completing a successful transaction, be able to stop in time. So, additional sales can be offered only to those customers who from the very beginning showed a clear willingness to buy. Those who were difficult to convince and who are close to their cash limit, when trying to add one or two more points to the check, will experience irritation and discomfort. This is one of the surest ways to quickly turn a loyal customer into a dissatisfied one.

Golden Rule seller– work consciously, focusing on settings that are different from the pressure of the “average check”. So, the founder of Beitraining, Gil Ostrander, suggested using the phrase “My life does not depend on whether you buy from me or from a competitor. And it also does not depend on whether you buy today or tomorrow.” The client wants to be heard, even if at first he is not at all eager to answer questions. Ultimately, only focus on customer needs, the desire to provide relevant information and avoid monotony lead to increased sales.

Chronic fatigue, emotional burnout, constant stress and, as a result, low productivity. Your sellers are exposed to all of the listed negative factors that directly affect ...

Editorial Shoes Report

There are several ways to understand how good a sales manager is. One of them is to determine whether the competencies that are important for a sales manager are in his working arsenal.

This can be helped by special questions or cases aimed at identifying the strengths and weaknesses of a specialist. They can be applied both at the stage of recruiting employees to the sales department, and to already working specialists in order to assess the level of professionally significant competencies of a manager.

So, let's get acquainted with the list of core competencies:

1. Expanding the customer base

Naturally, any company pursues the goal of attracting new customers. If the manager classifies himself as an active seller, it will be important to find out the following: How does he expand his client base? Where is he looking for new clients, what are his methods of working with information? How will he identify the decision maker and how will he interact with him?

A good salesperson will provide you with a plan of action to attract a new client to the company. Ideally, he will identify a potential customer base based on the specifics of the company, its product or services; show where he is looking for clients; how it works with the received information; How does he contact the decision maker?

2. Ability to sell by technology

Every person has the ability to do something or another. It is possible that your candidate is a born salesman and will be able to sell snow to an Eskimo or an umbrella fish, but even so, it is important to find out at what level he knows the sales technology. In other words, how exactly does he sell the product: intuitively or according to a certain system?

Ask the candidate about the stages of the sale. If he speaks confidently, step by step, with his examples based on personal experience in the field of sales, we can safely say: a person has the necessary skills, a certain set of managerial competencies. Accordingly, owns and sales technology.

You can also ask the candidate to evaluate their knowledge, for example, on a scale from 1 to 5.

3. The degree of effectiveness of the manager

You can figure out how useful a particular sales manager will be in your company based on his previous work experience. Ask the candidate the following questions:

• • How often were sales plans fulfilled under your leadership? How often was the plan exceeded?
  • How was your performance compared to other salespeople in the department?
  • Which clients come to the company is your merit?
  • What is your most big deal? Can you describe the transaction process in detail?
  • What difficulties did you have to experience and overcome when making deals?

Such questions are aimed at finding out the real degree of effectiveness of the manager. If he answers questions clearly and in detail, most likely, the performance of the employee at the previous job was really high.

4. Desire to grow and develop in sales

Also, a good manager usually gives out. Therefore, you need to find out if your candidate wants to continue his career, conquering new heights in sales. The following questions will help you with this:

• • What attracts you the most about your profession and why?
  • What difficulties do you experience in your position? How do you deal with them?
  • What is the most difficult part of your job for you?
  • What salary would you like to receive in a year?
  • Who, where and how do you see yourself in three years? In five years?
  • Explain what it means to you to be successful manager by sales". Are you such an expert? If not, what competencies of a manager do you still lack?

5. Working with clients

Give the candidate brief description product or service of your company and an approximate image of the client (needs, income level, status, etc.) with which the specialist will work in the future. After that, ask the manager what personal qualities, in his opinion, the client will expect from the seller?

There can be two scenarios for the development of events. In the first case, the applicant will name the characteristics corresponding to the company - reliability, availability, reasonable price of the product, etc. Thus, he will focus on the external qualities of the company, without affecting the competencies of the manager, which may be inherent in him as a seller. Well, such a candidate still has a lot to learn ☺

In the second case, the candidate will list competence, diligence, accuracy, speed of response to an appeal and other characteristics inherent in the seller. If you heard such an answer, we can congratulate you - the candidate is really experienced in sales.

Ask which of these qualities he possesses. Ask him to list his strengths and weak sides as a seller. What can attract a client in it? These questions will help to understand the level of competence of his work with clients.

6. Work with discounts

Ask the manager to solve the following problem: the client requires a discount that the company cannot provide. Ask for multiple solutions.

A manager who owns this competency will offer from 3 to 5 options approximately as follows:

• • What can we offer you in exchange for a discount?
  • Such a discount will be possible for you when purchasing the XXX quantity of goods;
  • We can provide you with an additional service;
  • We offer you a slightly smaller discount, but in the most convenient option for you;
  • I would love to give you such a discount, but, unfortunately, in our company there are certain rules and I must follow them.
  • I'm afraid it won't be fair to our other clients. We are all working on certain scheme. I think you would not want us to spoil our reputation in the market.

This case allows you to identify the variability and flexibility of the seller's thinking, knowledge of the specifics of the sales sector, the manager's ability to make contact and search for non-trivial solutions.

7. Conflict resolution

Offer the manager to solve the problem: the delivery time of the goods was violated, but it did not depend specifically on the sales manager. However, the claim was submitted to him. With the help of this case, one can assess the skills of a manager as a negotiator, his ability to work with claims and resolve conflicts in general.

A good seller will provide a similar scheme of actions:

1. 1. Expresses regret about what happened, takes control of the situation. Understands it, stipulates possible options problem solving.
   2. finds out maximum amount information from the employee who is responsible for the supply. He tries to resolve the conflict, based on the needs of the client and the interests of the company.
   3. Contacts the client, reports what has already been done to solve the problem.
   4. Discusses with the client what the company can do to avoid a repeat of the situation in the future.
   5. Discusses with colleagues how to avoid such problems in the future.

8. Dealing with doubtful clients

Ask your manager to resolve the following situation. The client, looking at the prices, doubts, saying “I don’t know, your prices are too expensive.” How will the candidate convince him to make a purchase?

The manager must listen to the objections of the buyer, take them into account, ask clarifying questions. Only after that the manager should give arguments in favor of the company's product. He can say: “You are right, the question of price is really very important both for you and for our company. May I clarify? Are you comparing with something else or are there other reasons? Depending on the answer, the manager will give 2-3 arguments in favor of your company's product.

9. Working with demanding clients

To find out if the candidate has this competency, ask the manager to recall a situation when his client wanted too much. Which side did the candidate take in this situation? How did you resolve the issue? Do his methods fit into the framework corporate ethics your company.

10. Client potential analysis

How does your candidate analyze the client's prospects?

A good sales manager will answer that it is impossible to tell about the potential of the client right away - one can only guess, because there can be a great variety of situations. And you can guess based on the buyer's answers to the manager's questions, the buyer's reactions, replicas, appearance, etc.

To develop and work out the entire set of managerial competencies, we have an excellent tool - a speech simulator for sales managers.

If you would like to receive a detailed sales manager competency model, please fill out the feedback form. And we will send it to you at the specified e-mail within 1 - 2 business days.

By clicking the "Submit" button, you consent to the processing of personal data.

Developing and constantly improving the author's Course School of Sales, we have set and continue to set ourselves several tasks:

create a comprehensive training program for salespeople with different levels of theoretical and practical training;

create the most applied course, which forms skills and abilities, the use of which will make it possible to quickly and significantly increase the return on each seller;

the learning process should include only the most necessary theoretical material, while the practical part, business and metaphorical games, exercises and workshops should make up at least 70% of the total training time.

The conceptual basis of the Sales School Course is the "competence approach"

Competence- this is a measurable characteristic of a person that determines the maximum efficiency of a person's performance of a certain activity.

Competence- this is a characteristic of a person that has a causal relationship to the effective and / or best, based on criteria, performance of a certain activity.

A causal relationship means that the competence predetermines or causes certain behavior and performance.

Based on criteria means that competence actually predicts good or bad performance, which is measured by a specific criterion or standard.

Lyle Spencer and Sign Spencer in their work Competencies. Models of maximum performance” called five levels of competencies:

1. Knowledge. Information, which a person possesses in certain content areas. The peculiarity of this competence lies in the fact that knowledge rather predicts what a person can do, and not what he does.

Competency model levels

1. Knowledge seller about the product he sells, as well as theoretical knowledge on the psychology of effective sales.

2. Skills. The ability to perform a specific physical or mental task.

Example: The skill of a sales manager to write offer or make a public presentation.

3. motives. Something that a person thinks about or wants constantly and that causes action. Motives “target, direct, and select” behavior towards certain actions or goals and away from the rest.

Example: Achievement-motivated sales managers constantly set promising and challenging goals (sales plans), take personal responsibility for achieving them, and enjoy feedback to achieve the best result.

4. I am a concept. I am the image (self-identity) of a person, his attitudes, beliefs, values. Human values ​​are reciprocal motives that predict human actions in situations where these values ​​can be realized. For example, a person who values ​​leadership is more likely to exhibit leadership behavior if given a task that will be a "test of leadership ability".

Example: Self-concept - the sales manager's belief that he can act effectively in any situation of the negotiation process - is part of his self-image as a professional and a person.

5. Psychophysiological features (or properties). Physical and psychological characteristics of a person and their corresponding reactions to situations or information.

Example: Presentable appearance and extroversion (focus on the outside world and on people) - physiological and psychological features for the competencies of a sales manager.

Surface competencies (knowledge, skills) are relatively easy to develop. Training is the most cost-effective way to strengthen and retain these abilities in sales managers.

Deep competencies (psychophysiological features) underlying the personality iceberg are more difficult to assess and develop; it is more cost-effective to select people based on these characteristics.

Competences based on self-concept and motives lie somewhere in between. Attitudes and values, such as self-confidence (seeing yourself as a "salesperson" rather than a "techie"), can be changed through training, psychotherapy, and/or exercise, although this may require more time and effort.

Generalized Competency Model of BEST SELLERS

Salespeople competencies vary based on the length and complexity of the sales cycle (time and number of interactions between initial contact and close of sale), company and region characteristics, product and customer type, and so on.

At the same time, the most important clusters (blocks) of competencies for the best sellers, as research and practical experience show, are the same - this is the Achievement and Action Orientation cluster, as well as the Interpersonal Impact and Influence cluster. These two clusters are mentioned almost equally often and both are important for successful sales. While there are more indicators and examples for Impact and Influence, Achievement Orientation is actually just as important.

Top seller competencies are described in descending order of frequency in the generalized model in the Generalized Competency Model for Salesmen table.

Table "Generalized model of competencies for sellers"

The weight	Competence
12 points	Influence and opposition to other people's influence Possesses skills of indirect influence Possesses skills to resist manipulation Addresses the client's concerns and concerns Predicts the impact of their words and actions Capable of resisting aggression Establishes an atmosphere of trust, creates a positive impression Effectively has an emotional impact (infection) Effectively convinces, argues
9 points	Initiative and Achievement Orientation Takes responsibility Persistent in achieving goals, does not give up easily Confident in own abilities; sets challenging but achievable goals Uses time effectively Effectively uses non-standard and emergency situations Effectively plans the implementation of tasks (Focuses on potential profit opportunities)
8 points	Interpersonal Understanding Understands non-verbal behavior Understands the position of others, their intentions Predicts the reactions of others Efficiently identifies customer needs
6 points	Orientation to customer service (customer focus) Focus on customer satisfaction Recognizes and satisfies the hidden needs of the client Deals effectively with customer claims and complaints (Becomes a trusted advisor to the client)
5 points	Self-confidence (assertiveness) Confident in your own abilities Takes on difficult tasks Has an optimistic outlook Demonstrates assertive behavior
4 points	stress resistance Anticipates and prepares for obstacles Possesses the skills of psychological defense self-regulation Has a focus on maintaining physical and psychological health
3 points	Relationship building Supports work-related friendly relations Has and uses networks of contacts
2 points	Search for information Strive to obtain information from many sources
Threshold	Technical expertise Possesses relevant technical or product knowledge