3 Core Principles of Sales Mastery

Here at PhoneBurner, we emphasize constant improvement. We believe in learning, growing, and getting better.

Our power dialing software is designed to provide sales reps with advanced features that optimize call quality and live answer rates—but sometimes, it’s also useful to revisit the basics of your sales approach to make sure your foundation is solid.

The following concepts underscore what sales is all about. They should be studied, internalized, and practiced always—because they lead to mastery of the craft.

Here are 3 core principles of sales success.

1. Sales Are Built on Trust

Sales are born out of trust and confidence—a belief that a purchase will produce a good result.

Where does that belief come from? Surely, some of it is based on the product itself. But even great products go unsold when they are presented by an untrustworthy source.

Much of this belief comes from the interaction between a salesperson and a prospect. A salesperson who inspires trust earns the opportunity to start a conversation—to express benefits, offer a solution, and convince a prospect that it's the right one.

This sales principle should impact your tone, your messaging, your style, and your strategy. Here are some tips:

• Be solution-oriented. Ask genuine questions, seek to understand your prospect's situation and pain points, then position yourself as someone with a real solution to their problem.
• Listen. Trust-building is based on a careful balance of speaking and listening, but inspiring confidence with your words can only come after engaging in active listening.
• Always be honest and fair—don’t promise what you can’t deliver, and always deliver on your promises.
• Remember, your reputation follows you. It's what earns you business, repeat business, referrals, goodwill, and praise. It's critical to your success.

Useful PhoneBurner Feature: Delay-Free Connections

Consumers are increasingly skeptical of phone calls. So what happens when a phone call starts with an awkward pause or delay? At best, it starts the call off on the wrong foot. At worst, it causes the contact to quickly hang up.

Many dialer solutions on the market today dial multiple lines and subject those who answer to this off-putting pause or delay. This negatively impacts everything from conversation quality, to number blocks, to spam flag risk, to answer rates.

Respect your contacts enough to eliminate this dreaded "telemarketer's delay" by using a delay-free dialer like PhoneBurner. You'll hear your contact say hello, and respond instantly.

2. The Benefit/Feature Balance

"What it is" never matters as much as "what it does for you." That's why effective sales is contingent upon successfully linking features with the benefits they provide.

Features can build interest in your product, but they won’t sell it. First you have to build desire for your product—and you do that through benefits.

Here is the difference in a nutshell:

• Features = what the product is
• Benefits = what the product does for you

Let's use PhoneBurner and two of our newest features, as an example.

PhoneBurner Feature: Live Leaderboards

Benefit: Real-time self-updating reports motivate your sales agents to be more productive and effective. Broadcast a live leaderboard up on the big screen and inspire friendly competition around the sales metrics that matter most to you.

Learn more about Live Leaderboards here.

PhoneBurner Feature: LeadStream Smart Lead Distribution

Benefit: Avoid time-consuming and error-prone manual lead distribution processes. LeadStream intelligently distributes leads to reps based on customizable rules so they’re worked by the right agents at the right time. Improve speed to lead and automatically redistribute unworked leads so good opportunities don’t go cold.

Learn more about LeadStream here.

The features listed above are succinct and shareable, but they lack impact without a discussion of their benefits.

There's one more important point to make: different prospects may be interested in different benefits, so rattling off benefits is not enough.

As covered in the first core principle, effective selling begins with good questions and active listening which will help steer you toward the benefits that matter most to your prospect.

3. Persistence Pays

It's amazing how much of the sales "game" is never even played. Despite how rare it is for sales to take place on the first contact, call, or meeting, a vast majority of salespeople give up after one or two attempts.

Don't let that be you.

Whether it comes from laziness, fear of rejection, or simply a misplaced focus on new leads, most good prospects don't get the attention they deserve—tossed out without being thoroughly nurtured.

It's a fundamental sales principle: "the fortune is in the follow-up."

Building relationships and inking deals takes time. Be persistent.

And internalize the fact that sales is often just a matter of timing. A “no” is often just a “not now.” But with smart follow-up and continued value prospects will bring themselves back into your funnel when the timing is right.

Useful PhoneBurner Feature: Automated Post-Call Follow-Up Sequences

PhoneBurner helps you and your reps follow up effectively and effortlessly with one-touch voicemail, email, and SMS capabilities. By streamlining these tedious post-call tasks and others, you can save valuable time and use it to reach more prospects without abandoning the conversations you’ve already started.

Learn more about our post-call workflow automations here.

Master Your Outbound Sales Calls with These Tips (& The Right Tech)

Sales tips and strategies are a dime a dozen. While it's great to explore some of them in an effort to improve as a salesperson, don't forget the basics.

Above are 3 core principles of sales mastery that should guide every tactic, script, habit, device, and tool you employ. Internalize them and you'll boost your sales numbers and build better relationships with your customers.

And remember—the right technology helps you take advantage of what you’ve learned and put it into practice. Get started with a free trial of PhoneBurner here and see what it can do for you.

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