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In sales, success isn’t just about having the gift of the gab or a knack for persuasion—it’s about mastering sales skills to the point where they become second nature. Just as athletes rely on muscle memory to execute complex movements with precision and efficiency, top performers in sales cultivate their form of muscle memory to deliver exceptional results consistently.

In this article, we’ll explore the concept of sales muscle memory and delve into the top 17 sales skills that must become ingrained in every top sales performer’s repertoire.

Understanding Sales Muscle Memory

Muscle memory is a phenomenon observed in athletes who have trained extensively in a particular sport or activity. It refers to the ability of the muscles to perform a specific movement or action automatically without conscious effort. Through repetition and practice, athletes develop neural pathways that allow them to execute complex movements quickly, accurately, and consistently.

For example, for 13 years, I trained in martial arts and practiced at least three nights per week. I can’t begin to guess how many blocks, punches, and kicks I delivered over the years. I have not trained for over 15 years, but speaking at a trade association event recently, I demonstrated a side block as I discussed sales muscle memory, and it was perfect. My arms moved in a half-moon path in front of my body. My elbow was far from my ribs, and my fist was level with my shoulder. I had a strong grip, engaging all the muscles in my forearm. How did this happen without me even thinking about all the steps to making a side block work? A side block is one of the first things you learn, second only to a strong stance.

During this presentation, I shared how the best martial arts fighters do not have to think about movements in the ring with an opponent; muscle memory kicks in from instruction with practice, application exercises, and trying the new skills repeatedly in real-life situations.

In the context of sales, muscle memory operates similarly. Top performers hone their skills through continuous practice and refinement until they become ingrained habits. These skills become so deeply embedded that they can be deployed effortlessly in any sales situation, whether collaborating with a client and discussing solutions, handling objections, or closing a deal.

Top 17 Sales Skills That Must Become Muscle Memory

1. Pre-Call Plan

Top sales performers have a pre-call plan before each sales call. They do their research and know the people they wish to meet, their roles, and what is important to them. They understand what has been published about the company and its key objectives and struggles. They have a plan for the call. Is this call to build rapport and conduct discovery, qualify the opportunity, or advance the sale to close? Are we educating other buyer decision-making team members or negotiating prices and terms? The purpose of the meeting dictates how the salesperson prepares and what they bring to the meeting. With a little research, they can quickly determine who the decision-makers and influencers are and what each person needs. Without a sales plan for each call, your salespeople run the risk of random acts of sales. Sometimes, they engage, and most times, they do not. Sales managers are unhappy with revenue results, and customers and prospects have poor satisfaction from the sales call. Pre-call plans are something every sales leader has mastered to drive revenue and market share growth.

2. Active Listening

Effective communication begins with listening. Top performers actively listen to their clients, tuning in to their needs, concerns, and preferences. By practicing active listening, sales professionals can uncover valuable insights that enable them to tailor their approach and offer personalized solutions.

3. Building Rapport

Building rapport is essential for establishing trust and credibility with prospects. Through genuine conversation, empathy, and rapport-building techniques, top performers create a connection with their clients, laying the foundation for a fruitful business relationship. We want to develop business relationships, not friendships. Salespeople who need to be respected more than being liked are top performers. They ask great questions and are not afraid to ask for the order.

4. Product Knowledge

In-depth product knowledge is a cornerstone of successful selling. Top performers invest time and effort into mastering the features, benefits, and applications of their products or services, allowing them to articulate value propositions effectively and confidently address customer inquiries. Buyers today are hungry for applications and best practice advice not found in your brochures or website.

5. Handling Objections

Objections are a natural part of the sales process. Top performers anticipate objections and have prepared responses to address them effectively. We do not try to overcome objections but handle them professionally. Through practice and role-playing, sales professionals develop the ability to handle objections with poise and conviction, turning challenges into opportunities and revenue.

6. Closing Techniques

Closing is where the rubber meets the road in sales. Unfortunately, 67% of salespeople struggle with closing skills. They have either yet tyet to receive closing skills training or coaching, or they have a mindset that asking for the order is too pushy. Whatever we diagnose with the sales effectiveness assessment, we can improve sales closing skills. Top performers recognize buying signals and employ closing techniques to win the deal. Whether it’s the assumptive close, the trial close, or the alternative close, mastering these techniques allows sales professionals to ask for the sale and secure commitments from clients confidently.

7. Time Management

Time is a precious commodity in sales. Salespeople, on average,e spend less than 20% of their time selling. Top performers prioritize their tasks, set clear goals, and manage their time effectively to maximize productivity and focus on high-value activities. By implementing time-saving strategies and minimizing distractions, sales professionals optimize their workflow and achieve better results.

8. Adaptability

The sales landscape is constantly evolving, and top performers are adaptable in the face of change. Top performers are inquisitive and have a high figure-it-out factor. Whether it’s adjusting to new technologies, market trends, or customer preferences, sales professionals embrace change and adapt their strategies accordingly to stay ahead of the curve.

9. Emotional Intelligence and Situational Awareness

Emotional intelligence plays a crucial role in sales success. Top performers possess high self-awareness and empathy, allowing them to understand and connect with their clients more deeply. By recognizing and managing their own emotions and those of their clients, sales professionals build stronger relationships and drive better outcomes. They have mastered the art of staying in the moment and focusing their time and energy on the right behaviors.

10. Problem-Solving

Sales professionals encounter a myriad of challenges and obstacles in their day-to-day activities. Top performers approach these challenges with a problem-solving mindset, seeking creative solutions and thinking outside the box to overcome barriers and achieve their goals.

11. Networking

Networking is valuable for expanding one’s professional network and generating new business opportunities. Top performers proactively cultivate relationships with industry contacts, peers, and potential clients, leveraging their network to uncover leads, referrals, and partnerships. They build what we refer to as their relationship matrix in key accounts with five or more key decision-makers and not just the buyer who writes the order.

12. Negotiation Skills

Negotiation is an integral part of the sales process. Top performers are skilled negotiators who understand the art of compromise and value creation. By identifying mutual interests, exploring win-win solutions, and maintaining a collaborative approach, sales professionals negotiate favorable outcomes that benefit both parties. Over 75% of professional buyers have received formal negotiations skills training. Buyers practice their negotiation skills three to five times per day. Sadly, very few salespeople have received formal negotiation training, ultimately leaving money on the table when it comes time to close. Salespeople trained in negations take a consultative approach and often build a business chase not about price but the impact the purchase will make on the bottom-bottom, unfollowing a formal sales process and confirming value along the way. Negotiations should be an easy process and not something salespeople dread.

13. Follow-Up

Follow-up is key to maintaining momentum and nurturing relationships with prospects. Top performers follow up diligently after an initial meeting, a sales presentation, or a demo. By staying top of mind and providing timely follow-up, sales professionals demonstrate their commitment and professionalism, ultimately increasing their chances of closing the deal. Today, top performers follow up through various means, such as phone, email, text, LinkedIn messages, face-to-face meetings, and Zoom. In our follow-up training, we ask salespeople to ask their customers how they wish to be communicated with. With each follow-up, they provide more value to advance the sale to a close and provide an opportunity to serve their customers.

14. Resilience

Sales can be a rollercoaster ride of highs and lows. Top performers possess resilience in the face of rejection, setbacks, and challenges. Our course helps salespeople with low handling rejection scores, and we train them to be rejection-proof. They bounce back quickly from disappointments, learn from failures, and maintain a positive attitude, fueling their drive and determination to succeed.

15. Continuous Learning

The best sales professionals never stop learning and growing. They own their skills development. They attend conferences, read sales books, and participate in additional training their employers deliver outside work. Top performers invest in professional development, seeking training, resources, and mentorship opportunities to expand their knowledge and skill set. Often, we facilitate peer-to-peer learning with the most experienced veterans, sharing their best practices with the rest of the team. By staying abreast of industry trends and best practices, sales professionals position themselves for long-term success. Sales leaders and sales managers must have strong sales coaching skills to help their teams improve their skills.

16. Self-Reflection

Self-reflection is a critical component of personal and professional growth. Top performers regularly evaluate their performance, identify improvement areas, and set self-development goals. Working with sales managers and coaches, we debrief recent sales calls on areas where the call went well and on opportunities to improve future sales calls. By fostering a culture of continuous improvement and self-awareness, sales professionals strive to reach new heights of excellence in their craft.

17. Continuous Prospecting

Top sales performers prospect continuously, seeking opportunities to help their current customers and prospects. This requires strong prospecting skills and tools as well as a prospecting cadence. They are looking for unresolved problems and seek to solve them with their customers. This requires them to be inquisitive and have strong discovery and qualifying skills. They must clearly understand their ideal customer profile, the decision-making personas of the key people, what they value most, and how they measure success.

In the competitive sales world, mastering the art of sales muscle memory is essential for achieving sustained success and outperforming the competition. Our voice of customer research shows how you sell is much more important than what you sell today. Sales conversations must be authentic, demonstrate competence, and build trust. Buyers will quickly move on if they sound unprepared or have canned sales messages. Post pandemic buyers want business consultants masquerading as salespeople not transactional reps with commission breath.

Do your salespeople have the skills to have conversations that lead to revenue, or do they show up and throw up?

Do your salespeople have prospecting skills, or do you experience random acts of sales each month?

By honing the top 15 sales skills outlined in this article, sales professionals can develop the confidence, competence, and consistency needed to excel in their roles and drive exceptional results.

Through continuous practice ( yes, that means role-playing), refinement, refinement, and adaptation, top performers build a solid foundation of skills that become ingrained habits, enabling them to thrive in any sales environment and seize opportunities for growth and advancement.

Does your sales team have the skills and beliefs to become top-performing salespeople today?

What skills gaps are hurting your ability to drive explosive growth in revenue, market share, share of wallet, and gross profit margins?

How effective is your sales team today?

How much more effective could they be?

How would building muscle memory affect your bottom line and shareholder-holder value?

Let’s schedule a call and discuss how we can help build sales muscle memory for your sales team so that how you sell becomes a core competency of your sales team.

Here in Cleveland Ohio everyone is excited about the eclipse. As luck would have it the Cleveland and surrounding areas will be perfect to experience a total eclipse. Hotels are hosting visitors from around the world. Local cites have organized Eclipse events and parties and even our children have a day off from school. My wife even bought me a shirt to wear that says..”hello darkness my old friend” From what I understand, it will take an hour to have a full eclipse and we will have darkness for three to four minutes then another hour for the eclipse to disappear.

I was speaking with a business owner this week and I shared his sales problems, and I called it a “sales eclipse”.

His revenue has declined for the last few years and his gross profit margins have decreased as well. He shared he has lost a few large customers over the past twenty-four months and his team has not closed a new customer in some time. To me that’s a sales eclipse. I wrote this short post to help others who may be experiencing the signs of a sales eclipse.

In sales, staying attuned to the needs and challenges of your customers is paramount. Failure to do so can result in a phenomenon known as a “sales eclipse,” where your competitors outshine you by understanding and addressing customer needs better. This can lead to a decline in revenue, diminishing profit margins, and missed opportunities.

Recognizing the signs of a potential sales eclipse is crucial for businesses to pivot and adapt effectively.

Here are six signs to predict if you’re at risk of experiencing a sales eclipse: Stagnant or Declining Revenue:

Decrease in Revenue

One of the most obvious signs of a looming sales eclipse is a consistent decline in revenue over time. If your sales figures are plateauing or decreasing year over year, it’s essential to investigate the root cause. Are your competitors capturing a larger share of the market? Are customer preferences shifting? Understanding the reasons behind revenue trends can help you proactively address any impending challenges.

Decreasing Gross Profit Margins:

A decline in gross profit margins indicates that your pricing strategy may be losing its effectiveness. If your competitors are offering more value for a similar or lower price, customers may be inclined to switch loyalties. Analyze your cost structure, pricing models, and value proposition to ensure that you remain competitive in the market without compromising profitability.

Loss of Key Accounts:

Losing key accounts to competitors is a clear indicator that your team may be out of touch with customer needs. When clients choose to take their business elsewhere, it’s essential to conduct thorough post-mortem analyses to understand why they made the switch. Gathering feedback directly from departing customers in win loss interviews can provide valuable insights into areas where your organization may be falling short. Decreased Customer Satisfaction Scores: Monitoring customer satisfaction scores and feedback is crucial for gauging the effectiveness of your sales efforts.

A decline in Customer Satisfaction:

Indicates that your products or services no longer align with their evolving needs or expectations. Regularly interviewing customers and soliciting feedback can help you identify areas for improvement and make necessary adjustments to prevent a sales eclipse.

Lack of Innovation or Adaptation:

In today’s marketplace, businesses must continuously innovate and adapt to stay ahead of the competition. If your organization is resistant to change or fails to embrace emerging trends, you risk falling behind and experiencing a sales eclipse. Encourage a culture of innovation within your company, foster collaboration across departments, and invest in ongoing training and development for your sales team to ensure they remain agile and responsive to market shifts.

Wrong Sales Mindset :

Are your salespeople focused on helping and serving their customers or hitting their sales goals and commission targets? One of the quickest ways to break a relationship with a customer is for the salesperson to let their needs over shadow the needs and challenges of their customers. Decision- makers can smell commission breath a mile away. Do your salespeople lead with the intent to serve? I challenge you to listen how they speak with their customers and about their customers. We can quickly assess the beliefs and mindsets of your sales team with a sales assessment.

Recognizing the signs of a potential sales eclipse is the first step towards safeguarding your revenue and market position. By staying vigilant, actively engaging with customers, and remaining adaptable in the face of change, you can mitigate the risk of being eclipsed by competitors and sustain long-term success in the marketplace. Providing your team with clear expectations about helping customers consultatively and not “selling them” to hit their commission targets is key.

Remember, understanding and addressing your customers’ current needs and challenges is the key to avoiding a sales eclipse and staying ahead of the curve.

Is your team experiencing a sales eclipse?

Staring at it in hopes it just goes away will only damage your vision for the future.

Putting on dark glasses and hoping things will return to normal soon is not a strategy.

Let’s schedule a call to discuss how your team got to this point and how to quickly drive explosive growth in the future.

The role of sales is critical to the success of the organization and challenges are inevitable. From generating leads to closing deals, sales professionals encounter a myriad of obstacles that can hinder their success. Identifying these issues and implementing effective solutions is crucial for maintaining a thriving sales operation. Having helped teams fix sales problems for over 37 years I wanted to share what I have observed as common sales problems and how to fix them.

Here are the top 10 sales problems and strategies to overcome them:

1.Lack of Qualified Leads: Without quality leads, sales efforts are often wasted. As I share in my training on identifying your ideal customer, we do not want salespeople contacting anyone who can fog a mirror. We want to spend our time focused on reaching out to current customers and prospects that have a high probability of having problems and challenges we can solve. To address this, we must focus on refining your target audience and implementing robust omnichannel lead generation strategies such as content marketing, social media outreach, and networking events. Additionally, invest in lead scoring to prioritize prospects most likely to convert.

2.Ineffective Sales Communication: Poor communication can result in misunderstandings and missed opportunities. Can your salespeople clearly and succinctly share your companies’ value proposition? As we work with sales teams it is not unusual to assess the team and find as high as 70% of the team cannot share a strong value proposition. Provide comprehensive sales training to your team, emphasizing active listening, effective discovery and qualifying questioning techniques, and clear articulation of value propositions. Encourage regular communication and feedback within the team to foster collaboration and alignment.

3.Difficulty Differentiating from Competitors: In crowded markets, standing out from competitors is essential. Here we want your sales team to understand your distinctive competence. We want to answer the question: Why do customers buy from us? Conduct thorough market research to understand your competition and identify unique selling points. We highly encourage the teams we work with to conduct voice of customer research. In this research our team will ask what your product or service does well? What competitors do you buy from? Why don’t you buy those products or services from your company? In these critical customer and prospect interviews we quickly gather answers to the questions we need to answer. Keep in mind as well the reason someone bought from you five years ago is often much different than why they buy from you today. We must capture the “why” for today. Tailor your messaging to highlight what sets your product or service apart and emphasize the value it delivers to customers today. Work with your salespeople and help them be able to share your value statement conversationally. Equip your salespeople with success stories and case studies that support your value statement.

4.Long Sales Cycles: Lengthy sales cycles can drain resources and impede revenue generation. Long sales cycles also impact the mindset of your salespeople, and we must address this quickly when it occurs. Do you have a formal sales process? Are your salespeople using it or are they skipping steps. For example, it is not unusual to see salespeople act transactionally since the pandemic, skipping rapport, discovery and qualifying. When they skip these steps, the sales cycle becomes long, and close rates decrease. Build a formal sales process and train your salespeople how to use it. Update your CRM to follow the formal sales process and hold salespeople accountable to following the process in your weekly coaching sessions. Streamline the sales process by identifying and addressing common bottlenecks. In an earlier post I referred to places in the sales process where sales stall as roundabouts, the sales spins and spins but does not go anywhere. Implement sales automation tools to expedite administrative tasks and nurture leads more efficiently. Additionally, focus on building strong relationships with prospects to accelerate decision-making.

5.Lack of Sales Alignment with Marketing: When sales and marketing teams aren’t aligned, it can lead to disjointed messaging and missed opportunities. You can quickly determine this is happening when your marketing tea says something like we delivered 123 leads last week and sales shares none of the names we were given were leads. Often, we find what marketing believes is a qualified lead is not a sales qualified lead. Foster collaboration between sales and marketing departments by establishing shared goals and KPIs. Encourage regular communication and feedback to ensure both teams are working towards common objectives. When I led a team that trained the world’s largest companies in product management, we highly encouraged marketing to interview customers and make customer visits. Marketing time with customers helps marketing deliver leads to sales and not just lists.

6.Failure to Adapt to Changing Market Dynamics: Markets are constantly evolving, and sales strategies must evolve accordingly. Do you have an outdated value proposition? Is what your salespeople are saying to customers and prospects no longer resonating with your customers of today? Stay abreast of industry trends, customer preferences, and competitive developments. As mentioned earlier we recommend our clients conduct voice of customer research and make at least two customer interviews per week. Continuously assess and adjust your sales approach to remain agile and responsive to market shifts. For example, today over 75% of the sale process is over before a buyer speaks with a salesperson. We must have a strong web presence and digital marketing strategy that leverages the key words and phrases to help customers and prospects find our site. Sales teams also must be updates with new sales tools, processes, and training.

7.Inadequate Sales Training and Development: Continuous learning is essential for sales success and improving sales effectiveness, yet many organizations overlook training and development initiatives. It is not unusual for a prospect to call me and ask if I can attend a meeting and train their team. Can I attend and deliver content that will help their team? Yes. Is this the best way to train salespeople? NO! I encourage each client to first assess the skills of their salespeople, sales managers, and sales leaders. Then collaboratively we work together and design a spaced stacked learning experience that is designed for retention and deliver the maximum ROI on your training dollars invested. In our training we offer interactive virtual training with application exercises for each skill. We recommend investing in ongoing sales training programs that cover product knowledge, sales techniques, and industry trends. Provide opportunities for skill development and career advancement to keep your sales team engaged and motivated. If this feels daunting it does not need to be. It starts with understanding the skills of your team and delivering training to close skills gaps we discover. We must deliver training that is retained and applied in their daily activity. Once we have created a strong sales skill foundation, we can deliver specific training based on needs sales managers observe. For example, one client I trained a year ago has asked I deliver key account planning and business acumen training. Another client prefers to use sales books. We have the sales team read books like SPIN Selling, Trusted Advisor, and many more. One client asked I share monthly You tube videos that reinforce and refresh sales skills. Other clients ask we create sales scenarios for sales managers to use in their sales meetings for salespeople to practice specific skills. Top preforming salespeople are trained and confidently drive explosive growth in revenue and gross margins, ( if you would like to learn more about sales training you can download a white paper here)

8.Resistance to Embracing Technology: Technology can enhance sales efficiency and effectiveness, but some sales professionals may be resistant to adopting new tools and processes. Offer comprehensive training and support to help your team embrace technology solutions such as CRM systems, sales automation software, and analytics platforms. Highlight the benefits of these tools in streamlining workflows and driving results. The quickest way to help your sales team embrace and use new tools is to clearly articulate the benefits to them. Salespeople , from my experience often resist new tools because they feel it is one more way for ‘big brother” to watch me. Help them see the new technology to improve their results and compensation.

9.Inconsistent Sales Performance: Inconsistency in sales performance can be demoralizing and detrimental to overall success. We refer to it as roller coaster revenue or random acts of sales. One very strong sales month or quarter then one or two quarter with sales results struggling. Implement a performance management system that sets clear expectations, tracks progress, and rewards top performers. Provide coaching and support to underperforming team members, identifying areas for improvement, and offering targeted training and development opportunities. As buyers have become must more sophisticated, the old days of random acts of sales do not work. We must have a formal sales process with specific leading indicator KPI’s.

10.Lack of Customer Focus: Ultimately, sales success hinges on understanding and meeting customer needs. Do your salespeople have commission breath? Buyers can smell commission breath from a mile away. What is the salesperson’s intent in speaking with the decisionmaker? Are your salespeople reaching out to ideal customers and trying to help the customer solve common problems or are they selling to hit their goals and commission? Salespeople who take a consultative approach, build business relationships, and collaboratively suggest solutions become top performers. Salespeople with commission breath take a transactional approach and decisionmakers can feel it. Cultivate a customer-centric culture within your organization, emphasizing empathy, responsiveness, and a commitment to delivering value. Encourage active listening and solicitation of feedback to continuously refine your products and services to better serve your customers.

Addressing these top sales problems requires a combination of strategic planning, effective communication, and continuous improvement.

By proactively identifying and resolving these challenges, organizations can empower their sales teams to achieve greater success and drive sustainable explosive growth.

A few questions for you to consider….

Do your salespeople have the skills to meet their goals?

Are your customers satisfied or unhappy with how your sales communicates with them?

Do sales and marketing in your organization have the same definition of a lead, opportunity, and prospect?

Can your sales team clearly share your value proposition and is it still resonating today?

Are your salespeople trained and equipped to sell consultatively or do they have a bad case of commission breath?

What impact would it have on your revenue and gross margins to have a trained sales team that grows organic revenue by more than 20%?

What impact would it have on your net income if your salespeople improved their skills selling based on value and not just a transaction based on price?

Let’s schedule a call if you would like to assess your sales teams’ skills today and develop a plan to close any sales skills gaps, we discover.