“In order to sell,” said Rebecca Moore-Leach, an account executive at staffing platform GigSmart, “you need to understand what you’re selling and the worth it provides.”
Simply knowing that worth isn’t enough — representatives need to be able to communicate. But what skills should a sales rep hone to ensure their communication sets them apart from the rest?
Moore-Leach believes that perception is essential. “Confidence is important throughout the entire sales process, but it is particularly necessary in the introductory stages with a new client because that client trusts you to provide a solution for their pain point,” she said.
Whitney Luke, a solutions consultant manager at professional service software platform Accelo, believes that successful selling is about knowing your clients. “Active listening will allow you to successfully uncover a prospect’s needs and form a relationship with them,” she said.
For ambitious sales reps looking to jump on the next rising star, a peek behind the curtain at what it’s like to work at a rapidly growing company is hard to beat. Built In sat down further with Moore-Leach, Luke and four other industry leaders across the Colorado area to discuss what makes their company’s product great to pitch and what it takes to be a great sales representative.
What about your company’s product or service makes it great for pitching to prospects?
Freshworks has constantly designed their products with the end user in mind. Our product team develops their roadmap based directly on customer feedback and is continually innovating to stay one step ahead of the competition. Because of Freshworks’ full suite of products, you get the opportunity to work with different departments and stakeholders within an organization from IT to CX to sales and marketing. This not only creates a more exciting environment to pitch different products to different key decision makers, but also gives you greater insight into the businesses’ needs as a whole.
Freshworks’ out of the box functionality makes it easy for customers to implement and begin using the product from day one. Along with this, our products are all built in house on a single platform so they integrate seamlessly together without any disruption to the business. From pre-sales to post-sales, all customer interactions are treated as a true partnership, creating stronger relationships and more opportunities to support other sectors of the business.
From pre-sales to post-sales, all customer interactions are treated as a true partnership.”
What are the most important skills required for selling your company’s product or service?
While product knowledge and sales acumen will help you ramp quickly and find success in this role, genuine curiosity and persistence when uncovering the “so what” behind a customers decision to reevaluate their tech stack will continue to drive larger deals with a faster close rate. Having an understanding of their whole business, not just one siloed department, will pay dividends when continuously expanding Freshworks’ suite of products within the business.
What about your company’s product or service makes it great for pitching to prospects?
Fivestars by SumUp is great for people who love working with small businesses and cherish the opportunity to bring them joy. Helping small business owners generate revenue is very impactful work since it can be very hard for small businesses to stay afloat. Especially over the last two years when businesses in nearly every industry were hit hard by the pandemic, we were able to work with our merchants to come up with solutions to help keep them above water. It has been so rewarding to support their success.
Helping small business owners generate revenue is very impactful work.”
What are the most important skills required for selling your company’s product or service?
It’s important to be a people person and to be able to work with different personalities to feel out a customer’s way of working. A lot of the job requires you to be a good listener — you need to really listen and understand a customer’s problems to offer the right products as a solution. What’s different about Fivestars by SumUp is the importance placed on building real relationships. The sales team is involved in every stage of the process, which really gives you a chance to see how you’ve touched the lives of every individual customer.
What about your company’s product or service makes it great for pitching to prospects?
Udemy Business is a great product to pitch because many companies want to further invest in their employees’ education in technical and soft skills. We have created a one-stop shop to help with retention and upskilling for companies of all fields to achieve their business outcomes. Combining our courses with the data and analytics we provide, the product speaks for itself.
It’s essential to actively listen and fully understand your customer’s pain points.”
What are the most important skills required for selling your company’s product or service?
When selling Udemy Business and our suite of learning solutions, developing a strong sense of research will help with position personas, which allow you to pitch exactly what they need. You can also help the customer feel confident in the product by being concise on the phone. Finally, it’s essential to actively listen and fully understand your customer’s pain points and how best you can support addressing them.
What about your company’s product or service makes it great for pitching to prospects?
Accelo is a platform that was built to help service businesses manage their client work across all aspects from prospect to payment. The customers we work with are small businesses and often resource-strapped when it comes to implementing new software. We set ourselves apart from our competition by offering robust implementation and customer support packages.
According to Fortunly, half of small businesses will fail before their fifth birthday. Accelo was built with a mission to help business owners understand their profitability, which is the single most determinant of their survival and success. Our software specifically aims to give business leaders more insight and therefore increase their profitability, ensuring they can make it past that fifth birthday.
For me, getting to pitch a platform like Accelo that can help small businesses succeed is a rewarding and unique opportunity. There’s really nothing more exciting than watching a business owner’s eyes light up when you show them something that feels like it was built with their individual business needs in mind. The very fact that we can give them what they need to survive their fifth birthday makes it an enticing pitch!
You’ll find success when you are focused on really understanding a small business’s unique challenges.”
What are the most important skills required for selling your company’s product or service?
Be a good listener. Accelo has a robust set of features, and once you build rapport and uncover their true needs through listening, you can build a demonstration tailored to highlight the features that will help them solve their biggest challenges.
Be empathetic. Accelo is a relationship-based sale. You’ll find success when you are focused on really understanding a small business’s unique challenges and helping them work towards a better future. When you do this, you have the opportunity to make a huge impact on these businesses which lasts far beyond when the sale closes.
Be tenacious. Relationship-based selling can be a challenge, and you have to be determined to build a relationship with your prospects and then use your knowledge to tailor Accelo to their needs. We find our most successful reps are tech-savvy learn-it-alls who are constantly competing against themselves to learn and sell better with every new prospect they meet.
What about your company’s product or service makes it great for pitching to prospects?
The UI/UX is so simple and easy to understand. I am able to walk prospects through the product on the first call and they fully understand how we’re able to solve the problem. This helps us get our initial point of contact or champion excited to go back to their team and bring the right people on the next call. Plus, because it’s so easy to understand, we’re able to send quick and personalized product walkthrough videos that make sense when our prospects are explaining what we do internally.
What are the most important skills required for selling your company’s product or service?
To be a successful seller at Scholars, you need to have some experience running a sales cycle from prospecting through close. However, we are an early-stage, fast growing company so there is a range of more important skills we focus on:
IMPORTANT SALES SKILLS AT SCHOLARS
- Not afraid to ask questions, but doesn’t need to be told what to do.
- Is willing to do whatever it takes to reach their goals.
- Takes it upon themselves to learn new skills.
- Asks great questions and listens to people’s answers.
- Wants to be seen as an expert in the industry they work in.
- Gets excited about change and tries new things.
What about your company’s product or service makes it great for pitching to prospects?
GigSmart offers companies a unique and cost-effective way of finding both temporary and permanent workers. We are currently in the toughest labor market of my lifetime, so demand for our product is significant across virtually all industries. Our target market is huge. We use technology to assist companies in securing talent faster and more cost-effectively than any other staffing solution in the market. There is absolutely no risk to trying GigSmart. From a sales rep perspective, we have a large addressable market — most companies need us. Being faster and more cost-efficient makes pitching GigSmart an easy process. Ultimately, most companies in the market need staff and we do it faster and more-cost efficiently than anyone else. It’s a no-brainer.
The most important skills to sell GigSmart are persistence, product knowledge and confidence.”
What are the most important skills required for selling your company’s product or service?
The most important skills to sell GigSmart are persistence, product knowledge and confidence. Persistence is key because in today’s labor market it’s a matter of when, not if, they will have a staffing need. Once you create a consistent communication schedule with a prospect, the next step to closing a deal is to have the product knowledge and confidence to effectively demonstrate how GigSmart can provide value to their business. I am learning every day how to build these skills. You must be confident in what GigSmart can provide and your ability to support them as a customer to gain their trust. All in all, these skills assist me every day to be successful and increase revenues.
