Article written by Aja Frost

The difference between an average rep and a good salesperson can be staggering, but that “difference” isn't necessarily a given. There are certain habits successful salespeople exhibit and sales best practices exemplary reps abide by — and virtually any sales professional can learn and apply them.

Good reps earn their prospects’ admiration, loyalty, and referrals. They skilfully handle objections and pre-emptively surface concerns to make them disappear.

If you want greatness, good news. Following these rules of good sellers will help you become one of the top-selling salespeople on your team — or even company.

Article written by Dan Tyre (HubSpot)

Sales is an increasingly consultative profession. You could go so far as to say we're in the age of the "Always Be Helping" salesperson. That means reps need to provide prospects with helpful and specific resources as opposed to stuffing irrelevant information down their throats — but you can't get there if you don't understand where your prospect is coming from.

The sales rep-prospect relationship cuts both ways — as your prospects qualify you, you need to qualify them back. You have to be prepared to meet them at every stage of the buyer's journey and frame yourself as a knowledgeable, reliable, trustworthy resource.

That starts with asking the right questions at the right time. Here's a list of some of the most effective ones you can ask and when to ask them.

Article written by Jay Fuchs (Hubspot)

Time is a precious resource in sales — the efficacy of your sales process, whether a deal winds up closed-won, and virtually every KPI used to gauge your performance all hinge upon how effectively you spend yours.

But efficiently and effectively allocating your time can be tricky in sales — and running into at least a few time-wasters here and there is par for the course. That's why you need to stay abreast of any potential time-draining hitches and understand how to remedy them when you hit them.

To help you get there, we reached out to a few sales leaders for some perspective on common ways sales professionals waste their time and how to best avoid those pitfalls. Let's take a look at what they had to say.

Article writtlen by Michael Pici (Hubspot)

You don’t get many chances with your prospects. Send a self-serving, pointless, or pushy email, and they’ll probably write you off. Do it again — and they definitely will.

As a result, you should think carefully about every message you send. Does it provide new information? Does it have a clear purpose? Does it somehow benefit the buyer?

If you can’t answer “yes” to all three of those questions, head back to the drawing board. To help you out, we’ve outlined the five worst types of sales emails and how to fix them.

Some deals hit walls — that‘s just an unfortunate fact of sales life. As wonderful as it would be to have every sales engagement run smoothly end-to-end and amount to an amicable, productive resolution, that’s just not how things work.

As a salesperson, you‘re almost guaranteed to have to handle this kind of situation at some point in your professional life. So to help you best approach this dilemma when the time comes, I’ve put together a list of four key tips I've learned over my career for closing a deal that has lost steam.

Let's take a look.

Finding and keeping customers is one of the challenges for SMEs and often they make it more complicated than it needs to be. Have you tried to look for your audience in your local vicinity? Did you know that nearly 90% of mobile searches for local stores or businesses end with a call or a visit to the store within 24 hours? Therefore it seems logical to ensure you are easy to find for this market. Let’s look at seven ways to build your neighbourhood marketing.

Can you sell ice in winter? Some salespeople would say a resounding “YES” while others may struggle and even shy away from the challenge of selling ice in winter. This article is for those salespeople who are wondering how can they up their sales game or start it. Let’s look at six ways to crush sales.