How can a new salesperson gain credibility? When we pose this question to salespeople and sales manager, the responses we hear share a common underlying message – get on the customer’s side of the table.
This idea is expressed in a variety of forms: understand the customer needs, do what you say you are going to do, don’t pretend, or don’t over promise and under deliver. However, the underlying lesson is that you must get on their side of the table and convince the customer you know and care about them and can help them go where they want to go.
If you are a brand new salesperson, that is a herculean challenge. After all, you just arrived. You don’t know the customers, you have less than a complete understanding of the products and you are not accomplished in the fundamental skills of selling.
But all isn’t lost on the credibility front because there are two sources of credibility: personal credibility and company credibility.
Personal credibility is limited at first and takes time to build. The good news is that new salespeople don’t need to make a big impression immediately. Rather, new salespeople should create a plan that allows them to build their personal credibility over time, avoid the big up-front mistake, and leverage the credibility of the company.
When it comes to avoiding the big mistake and leveraging company credibility, a couple of points to highlight are:
Find every human and material resource you can to help you learn about the customers and your products and skillfully leverage them.
Find someone who knows how to sell and get them to provide mentoring.
Find out about the company’s past successes and translate them into stories you can use until you develop your own stories.
Get a list of the smartest blogs and books on selling and read them – you can’t get smart without reading, and fortunately today there is a lot of great stuff to read.