Transferrable skills are key when it comes to a unique and successful sales team, and hiring managers recognise this during the recruitment process. Success in sales requires a specific skill set beyond simply understanding how to send a LinkedIn message or how to navigate your company’s CRM system. It requires a healthy blend of soft skills, technical skills and interpersonal skills that are crucial for relationship-building in any sales role. So when you’re looking to hire a new sales team member to accelerate business growth, these are the key transferrable skills we’d highly recommend to keep a look out for.
Hiring a great sales professional can transform your results to bring you qualified leads, higher sales figures and faster growth. At Excelerate360, we know how crucial it is to identify and hire the right person for your sales team as an employer. We also appreciate it’s not easy to always get it right. We’ve compiled this list to help you look beyond a candidate’s previous experience and analyse whether they have the soft skills to help you smash your targets within the sales job.
Here are the seven best transferable skills to look out for:
1) Types of Communication
Communication may be the most obvious skill on this list, but that doesn’t make it any less important. Product knowledge is not enough – a salesperson must be able to articulate benefits in a way that will resonate with a prospect. Here, we will look at the two types of communication skills your staff should excel at to enhance their sales careers:
Verbal Communication Skills
Your prospect has a problem – whether they are aware of it yet or not. A salesperson with excellent verbal skills will be able to ask questions that engage the prospect’s mind to see this problem for themselves.
Then it is time to offer the solution and genuinely help your prospect.
Ask the right questions such as, ‘What’s the real challenge here for you?’ and ‘What does success look like for you?’ can open up real, honest dialogues to leverage a healthy business relationship. Communicating is all about establishing trust, so being clear, friendly and genuine can work wonders. But often, it’s what the salesperson doesn’t say, that makes all the difference…
Non-verbal Communication Skills
You’ll struggle to find a salesperson who isn’t a good talker, but the best excel sales skills are active listening skills. Truly listening is vital, instead of just waiting to respond in order to communicate effectively. Prospects pick up on this, so a great salesperson will acknowledge what they have said, ask a follow up question based on their response, or even repeat what they have said and seek clarification.
All of these things increase rapport and heighten the chances of closing the sale within a negotiation. Listening to the prospect is important, but reading between the lines by analysing their response brings us to another key transferable skill. This is where emotional intelligence comes in…
2) Emotional Intelligence
In order to truly understand the perspective of a prospect, great salespeople will be able to put themselves in their prospect’s shoes. Displaying empathy is not only great for building rapport and relationships, but for gaining knowledge of what it is the prospect desires out of the business transaction. Once you know, and have a good understanding, of the prospect’s wants, needs and pain points, it becomes much easier to make the sale which aligns with their goals.
According to a Harvard professor, 95% of purchasing decisions take place subconsciously. Good emotional understanding can make all the difference in during a successful sales process. If a salesperson can elicit an emotional response by telling a story of how this service will benefit them, there’s a good chance that feeling will spark a desire for your service or product offering.
‘People buy using emotion, then justify their decision with logic’
3) Analytical Reasoning
Presenting data is essential for closing a deal. Breaking things down in numbers can help pinpoint exactly where a certain problem lies and can also forecast how your intervention will improve their results. Critical thinking skills are vital as your sales staff will likely be negotiating at a high seniority level with company decision makers. This means they must be speaking their language and be able to showcase analytical skills at a strategic level.
It’s not enough to say how much your service will benefit an organisation – you must be able to prove it. If you’re interviewing a candidate who is looking for a career change, transferrable data analysis skills can be highlighted in previous roles and applied to a sales role. Having sales people that can break down a company’s current strategy, perform a SWOT or ROI analysis, and weigh up analytics is invaluable if you want accelerated growth.
4) Composure
“Sales success is 80% attitude and only 20% aptitude.” – Brian Tracy, Motivational Speaker.
Sales can be a tricky business and can, at times, require thick skin and resilience. Composure can come in many forms:
- They retain belief in what they are selling, no matter the amount of rejection
- They can stay calm under pressure when a prospect throws a tricky and unexpected objection
- They are able to build a relationship with a difficult prospect
- They can apply themselves in different industries
Great sales staff exude confidence and always believe in what they are selling. Despite any new challenge, they aim to provide value each and every time they pick up the phone, or hit send on an email. Finding staff with composure will help your sales team to hit targets month in, month out.
5) Good Teamwork
Teamwork skills are an essential behaviour in any businesses, especially within a sales department. A candidate may have extensive qualifications, but without the ability to show teamwork, they may not be the right fit. Sales can be a lonely job role at times, but having a team player onside can be infectious and increases your company’s chances of success. As much as you would like your salespeople to have self-motivation as one of their many transferable skills, ultimately your staff will be working towards a shared goal of hitting targets.
According to TeamStage (2022), feeling part of a team can enhance performance, reduce exhaustion and increase productivity.
So, be sure to assess your candidate’s range of skills and configure whether their transferable job skills include effective teamwork.
6) Time Management
Sales can be a numbers game and one of the most important numbers to get the better of is the one that keeps ticking. Time management is imperative in a results-dependent field like sales, as there will often be times where it feels like there is an impossible list of tasks to complete. Finding a sales rep who can manage these tasks effectively is critical to keeping up in a fast-paced environment.
Time management skills are essential when dealing with multiple cold calls, follow ups, spreadsheets, CRM, internal meetings and more. Find a candidate who thrives when it comes to organisational skills, and project management will become much easier moving forward.
7) Self Awareness
“We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey, Philosopher.
Much like emotional intelligence, self-awareness is about analysing beneath surface level. Only this time, your sales staff will be analysing themselves. Being able to self-reflect, without ego, to consider strengths and weaknesses, is enormous when it comes to improvement in one’s sales career.
Being self aware can mean evaluating what didn’t go so well, and how they as an individual or team can improve and adapt moving forward. This may be things such as:
- Being aware of tone of voice and how they come across
- Approaching a deal in a different way that resonates with the prospect’s personality type
- Challenging their growth mindset
- Being honest with other sales leaders
One way of uncovering this during the interview phase is to ask the candidate to give an example of when they made a mistake, and how they overcame it. Look for answers that elicit a positive attitude and a willingness to solve problems.
Remove Your Recruitment Headache
It takes serious time, resource and effort to build any sales team, especially a successful one.
At Excelerate360 we’ve spent years interviewing thousands of candidates to find the right team fit for every industry!
Our ever-expanding team have helped many companies grow by giving them dedicated salespeople to drive consistent results.
So, if you need any help recruiting your next sales superstar or would prefer to outsource the whole process, get in touch today.