How to Develop a Strong Sales Mindset: 6 Revolutionary Tips

A strong sales mindset is essential for every sales professional. In order to sell more and connect with your customers, you need to be in the right mindset. In this article, we’ll explain the importance of a sales mindset and list 6 tips for developing it quickly. 

This mindset is important no matter what industry you’re in, so we’ve made sure to keep our guide universal. The best part about developing a sales mindset is that it is easily attainable. You won’t have to invest too much time, nor will you have to ask for outside help. 

What is the right sales mindset?

Mindset can be described as a reflection of your beliefs, habits and previous experiences. Parts of your mindset are something you were born with, while other parts come and change with time. 

The sales mindset shapes how you react to specific situations and in turn the results of your sales process. That’s why it’s important to understand where your mindset comes from and how it can help you motivate your team and achieve more sales. 

In order to develop a strong sales mindset, it’s important to understand the difference between a hard-coded mindset and a soft-coded one. 

A hard-coded mindset refers to parts of the mindset that are developed over a long period of time. It can include: 

• Education
• Previous job experiences
• The presence or absence of a mentor
• Set of behaviours
• Values and beliefs

Each of these factors leaves either a positive or negative effect on an individual, which is what they carry into future endeavours.

On the other hand, a soft-coded mindset can include: 

• Skills
• Coachability
• Motivation
• Communication skills
• Active listening 
• Accountability
• And more  

These things can change rather quickly based on your situation. For example, if you work in a horrible environment, you won’t be so eager to communicate with others, but as soon as you change jobs, you’ll quickly pick up the new company culture and blend in. 

All in all, the combination of these two things as well as other driving forces leads you to develop the right mindset. You can overcome challenges and educate yourself as well as work on your skills to better yourself. 

Let us show you how. 

Coach your sales team

The onboarding process for sales professionals shouldn’t have an end date. You should constantly keep educating and coaching your team. 

Firstly, you need to make sure they truly understand your industry, company goals as well as your products and services. They can only sell them if they understand how they work. The more niche or high-end your products and services are, the longer your sales cycle will be. 

This means that the potential client will have a number of objections, questions and time to explore the competition. That is why your sales team needs to be prepared for any situation. 

Utilize a coaching platform to onboard all new employees with product training and make sure to periodically coach all employees every time you launch a new product or service. best way to gain an understanding of your solution is through hands-on use. 

It’s also important for your sales team to understand your competition and the way their products and services compare to the ones you sell. 

Make sure they know: 

• The price comparison
• Which features your competition lacks and which they offer that you don’t
• Who your target audience is as compared to your competitors
• Your bounce rate and the main reason behind it
• The most asked questions your customers have

If your salespeople aren’t prepared for sales calls, your potential clients won’t hesitate to reach out to a competitor. The speed at which you bring your leads information and answers is really important. 

Once your sales team knows everything there is to know about your solution, it’s also important to coach them in sales techniques. Observe their sales calls and help them better their approach and style of communication. 

Understand your audience

If you don’t know who you’re selling to, how can you appeal to their needs, wants and interests? Understanding your audience should be the starting point of all your operations, not just in sales, but also in marketing, customer service, development and more. 

Once you know the characteristics of your target audience, you can provide a better and more personalized approach. This means that you can tailor your content to them, shape the customer journey and remove any obstacles they may be encountering. With the help of a CRM software, you can better track and manage customer data in one place.

It’s important to understand the specific characteristics of your target audience:

• Location
• Age
• Industry
• Work description
• Level of technical knowledge
• Interests
• Behaviour

If you’re not sure how to gain this data, take a look at your Google Analytics, as well as any social media analytics of the platforms you use. Once you get the basic information, make sure to look at your CRM and take any data you can. 

Find the best candidates among your current clients to interview. Through these in-depth interviews, you’ll learn how your clients decide on their purchases, how they use your products and services, what their goals are and more.

All of these factors will help you create your specific buyer personas. Since you probably have more than one target audience, it’s important to distinguish between them and find the best course of action for every audience. 

Once you truly understand your clients and target audience, you’ll be able to shape your customer success strategy and develop a strong sales mindset.

Work on building trust with your client base

The easiest way to upsell your clients is by providing them with an amazing customer experience and building loyalty through the entire process. Clients love buying from companies they trust because it makes the whole experience easier. 

Building trust with your clients is especially important when selling a service. If your clients sense that your sales team is not honest, they might start looking for a different service provider. 

That’s why it’s important for your team members to engage in active listening. It refers to truly trying to understand your clients and preparing your answers in response to their needs, want and goals, instead of sticking to a generic call scenario. 

Great ways to build trust are with: 

• A well-crafted email marketing strategy
• Loyalty programs
• Offering cash-back guarantees
• Social media activities
• Having one-on-one chats with clients
• And more

Making sure your clients are comfortable is what helps them trust you more and respond to your sales activities more favourably. The more effort you put in, the better your results will be. 

Once you build loyal relationships with your clients, you’ll see how your sales mindset changes and makes you a better salesperson. 

Learn how to deal with rejection

Rejection is an essential part of sales, there is no way around it. No matter how talented and experienced salespeople are, they still won't have a 100% success rate. Since it can’t be avoided, it’s important to learn how to deal with it and look at rejection as an opportunity. 

Although it may not sound like it, rejection can be a great opportunity for your sales team to better their approach and make their sales mindset more positive. Although some salespeople are more talented than others, no one got to where they are without practice. 

If failure leads your sales team to lose their motivation and productivity levels go down, you need to coach them through those situations. 

Help them develop tools to analyze their own attempts and find out what went wrong or how they can better their process. Maybe they were too eager, didn’t listen to the customer carefully, or failed to mention specific features and benefits. 

The better prepared you are for your sales calls, the better your success rate will be. Lift up your team's spirits by organizing educational courses in which you’ll teach them how to avoid specific objections. 

Also, think about how to overcome objections that reference your competitors. If you get questions about specific features they offer that you don’t or questions about the price points, you need to be able to reassure your customers that you’re still the better option. 

Make sure to have prepared answers to all of these questions and teach your team members how to keep their spirits high. 

Learn how to motivate your team

Motivation is one of the cornerstones of sales teams and it’s especially important for remote workers. They need to know how to self-motivate, especially once they hit a rough patch. 

You need to give your employees the tools to deal with dips in motivation and productivity. 

Start by outlining your company goals. From there talk about the specific goals you expect your sales team to achieve, and lastly, the goals every salesperson should be able to achieve. 

Make sure to create goals that are focused on people, instead of just on the numbers. That’s what people will grab on to, knowing that their hard work leads to new hires, more PTO, better office equipment, a flexible work schedule and more. 

There is no one specific way to motivate your employees that will work for everyone. It’s important to listen to them and understand which tactics would work best. So while you’re offering bonuses and other group benefits, make sure to also think of ways to motivate the individuals. 

Think of some creative ways that aren’t as transactional as giving out cash. It could be anything from training opportunities, sports activities, gadgets or donations. The way you motivate your employees doesn't just help the team make more sales but also gives them more confidence in their work. 

As their confidence grows, so will their sales mindset. 

Work on your attitude

No one likes a pushy salesperson. No matter how good the product, service and offer may be, a salesperson with the wrong attitude will turn clients away. 

That’s why you need to work on your team members’ attitudes. If listening in on their sales calls leads you to believe they need to adjust their approach, coach them through it. Help them get their point across without seeming too arrogant. 

Create a workshop in which you’ll include fake sales calls and explain thought practice how a less salesy approach might do the trick. 

Furthermore, sometimes sales professionals become desperate and don’t remember to keep the call or meeting positive. If you start your sales call with a positive attitude, you’ll make the whole thing more enjoyable, which will lead to a better conversion rate. 

Staying positive may be a hard thing for some, but you need to be resilient. Even if you’re not hitting your quota, you should stay in a positive mindset and focus on the calls ahead. 

Remember, a strong sales mindset is not achieved overnight. You’ll have to work on it and be focused on the growth of your team members and sales team in general. 

Conclusion

While every sales professional is an individual, the way they develop a strong sales mindset is usually the same. It can be learned, but more importantly, it develops over time. Give your sales team the best chance possible by investing time and effort into their onboarding process and help coach them through the hard times that inevitably come. 

Knowing they have someone to turn to and rely on will help their confidence and put them in the right frame of mind. 

Our actionable guide will help you create the best sales strategy for helping your team members develop a strong sales mindset. Once you try it out, you’ll see how easy it is to better your team and sell more. 

From selling more, also comes the need for new hires. If you want to speed up that process, take a look at Better Proposals’ contract templates. They are designed to help you sign on new team members and work in all business situations. 

You can easily customize them to your needs and once you send them, the other side can sign them with a few clicks, diminishing the need for printing them out and scanning them. Sign up for a free trial and see how easy the whole process can be.