5 Pieces Of Advice For New Sales Reps

Welcome to the world of sales! You’ve just graduated from Uvaro, and you’re ready to become a brand new sales rep. You’ve got all the skills to go far in your tech sales career, but you want some advice before you start your first day. Perhaps you're working remotely and support in the moment is hard to come by. Uvaro has you covered, thankfully, in our '5 pieces of advice for new sales reps.

Without you, companies struggle to bring their products to the market. Salespeople are the main point of contact between customers and the business. And like any other profession, you’ll need to grasp the skill of being a salesperson to improve!Here are the top 5 pieces of advice for new sales reps on how you can excel in tech sales ASAP.

1 - Know yourself

But also know the product that you’re selling. Anybody who’s looking for advice for new sales reps needs to ensure that salespeople have a clear understanding of themselves and the product that they’re selling. Without the two, it’s almost impossible to become an excellent salesperson.

Firstly, self-awareness is very important in any aspect of life. Self-awareness makes you a stronger leader, a more successful entrepreneur, and better at handling rejection. Organizational psychologist Tasha Eurich found that around 95% of people think they’re self-aware, yet only 15% of people are actually self-aware.

Secondly, it’s critical to understand the product that you’re selling. It doesn’t matter if you’re in B2B or B2C — your clients or customers will sometimes ask challenging questions when you’re pitching. If you can’t overcome objections, it’s unlikely that you’ll sell enough products to grow the business.

Furthermore, the technology industry is innovative, and selling brand new concepts to customers could be challenging. You’ll need to understand every benefit of the product that you’re selling and how the product can improve the lives of your customers. You’ll also need to ensure that your pitch is clear and concise, and you’ll need to save time and focus on efficiency.

2 - Sell to the right people

And understand why you’re selling to them. Although the world’s best salespeople can sell products to a vast array of people, some customers aren’t always the best match. As such our best advice for new sales reps is that, more often than not, a quick "no" is as good as a quick "yes". Excellent salespeople can gauge when a customer is dragging their feet and not interested in your product.

Nonetheless, some customers will leave you pitching for ages without giving you a direct answer. It’s very important that you don’t waste your efforts on the wrong customers, and that’s why prospecting is so important.

According to research, 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the hardest aspect of the sales process, followed by closing (36%) and qualifying (22%). Yet, prospecting is the best way to ensure you’re finding the best customers for your products.

If you’ve successfully found the right prospects, you’ll understand why you’re selling to them and be able to provide the solution to their issue and create some urgency.

3 - Get a mentor

Whether you’re trying to become an actor, musician, athlete, or salesperson, you’ll need an excellent mentor to guide you to the top. Unfortunately, many sales leaders struggle to provide the best coaching because they’re trying to cut costs.

However, when companies offer a mentor to their salespeople, the benefits are enormous. 60% of sales reps say they’re far more likely to quit their job if their manager is a poor coach. Companies that offer dynamic sales coaching programs achieve 28% higher win rates than companies that fail to offer coaching programs. 

Your mentor should allow you to keep practicing continually and answer any questions you have on sales. Imagine you can learn from a veteran sales leader with decades of sales experience? That could speed up your learning process by years. If there’s any advice for new sales reps that’s absolutely critical, it would be finding a mentor!

PRO TIP: This might be something you have to look outside your organization for!

4 - Learn how to handle rejection

When you’re trying to accomplish anything in life, you’re going to face lots of rejection. Various industries, including performing arts and music, come with tonnes of rejection. However, working in sales is the one career where you’re going to face rejection daily.

For some people, it puts them off a career in sales. Yet, once you overcome your fear of rejection, a sales career becomes one of the most incredible careers on the planet.So our advice for new sales reps would be to build your emotional intelligence to handle rejection.

Did you know that sales reps who are highly emotionally intelligent tend to increase their close rates by 12 percent? Here are some tips to build your emotional intelligence:

• Have lots of motivation
• Practice maintaining a very positive and robust mindset
• Learn how to avoid taking criticism personally
• Emphasize with people around you
• Utilize leadership skills
• Be sociable and approachable

Once you’ve built up your emotional intelligence, you’ll be able to handle rejection more easily and get more sales.

5 - Use new tools

Upgrade your productivity and prospect's experience. Sales tools focus on a wide array of uses such as lead generation, lead enrichment, customer relationship management, video conferencing, and meeting scheduling to name a few. These include name brand products like.

• Salesforce
• Hubspot
• LinkedIn
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Many of the tools mentioned above are now common in many sales organizations. But you can never stop experimenting to find new tools for productivity and efficiency. Some of these new tools include the likes of.

• Chili Piper
• Calendly
• Kiite
• DocuSign
• Vidyard
• Uplead
• Salesloft
• Aircall

As a quick reminder, when you stop experimenting and stop learning, you stop growing.

Once you have your mentor and you’ve graduated from Uvaro, you’ll already know endless soft skills that enable you to succeed in sales. Now, you can start adding these new tools to your arsenal. Improve your performance quickly and drive your career to success even faster.

Perhaps one day, you’ll be able to provide advice for new sales reps too!

Our last piece of advice for new sales reps from Uvaro

Becoming a sales guru takes time, dedication, and lots of sacrifices. You’re also going to have lots of ups and downs along the way.

The Uvaro courses will give you the perfect guidance into building a thriving career in tech sales. Uvaro graduates benefit from expert training and career guidance. Join us to work & learn alongside a team of like-minded people!

We would love to hear from you, contact us today.