20 Genius Strokes to Paint Your Sales Masterpiece

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"Learning never exhausts the mind" and "The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding." These are just two powerful quotes from an individual who is regarded as one of the greatest artists of all time - Leonardo da Vinci.

As an artistic genius of philosophy, physiology and the humanities from the Italian High Renaissance, he is known as an early visionary who saw how technology could disrupt the world.

He also discovered that science without an understanding of human nature had no useful purpose or meaning.

Believe it or not, these concepts are heavily related to the world of sales which is an art of authenticity, psychology, persuasion and strategy. Like any art, it takes practice to perfect.

So without further ado and to follow in the footsteps of Leonardo who painted The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, Sales Is Art wants to inspire you with 20 Genius Strokes to Paint Your Sales Masterpiece.

1. Always personalise your sales calls, emails and meetings to engage your prospect.

With the global increase of online interactions since the Pandemic - consumers now view personalization as the default standard for engagement with McKinsey stating that 71% of consumers expect companies to deliver personalized interactions and 76% get frustrated when this doesn’t happen.

2. Do your linkedin due diligence.

It's important to do the appropriate levels of research on a prospect or company before you speak to them. this is in order to help you understand the buying profile of who you are dealing with and can help you be prepared for what sales solution could be the most relevant one - based on their work experience, education and interests on Linkedin.

3. Absolutely nail your introduction.

Whenever you meet a person for the first time - you only have a few quick number of seconds to get their attention, this means that the first few words in your sales meeting or call can make all the crucial difference on how successful your sales close will be.

4. Mirror the prospect as much as you can.

If executed effectively, mirroring (the art of closely matching a prospect's voice style / tone / speed or communication outputs) can raise the trust levels that the prospect has for a salesperson because they can relate to the individual on a more personal level - not just a business one.

5. Initiate Conversation Switches.

Recent data from Sales Insights Lab states that top sales people initiate more “back-and-forth” in their sales process i.e. when they are speaking, they try to engage the prospect to quickly speak and vice versa in order to keep them highly engaged throughout the discussion.

6. Maximise Your Call-time and Meeting Duration.

Many important past and recent sales studies suggest that top sales performers share the common trait of speaking with prospects for significantly higher periods of time than those who do not.

7. Use discovery questions that can have a greater psychological impact.

The greater psychological or emotional impact you can have on a prospect, the greater the chance they will buy your product or service. The sharper the questions you can ask your prospect in the early discovery or fact finding stage that engage the psychology or emotions of the person - the better successful outcome you will have.

8. Summarise the initial key information points that your prospect has given you.

A ‘Summary Close’ technique involves mentioning the major points of the sales conversation along with key features, benefits and important information said by the prospect - before you take final steps to close the deal. Research suggests that this technique can significantly increase the success rate of closing a sale.

9. Try to do more video calls then phone calls

Research suggests that only 7% of communication is verbal - the other 93% includes major aspects such as body language and facial expressions. A video call is a salesperson's window into engaging all these spectrums of communication which cannot be done on a standard landline or mobile phone call.

10. Be different and not obvious.

When a prospect thinks that you are like every other salesperson that pitches them a product or service - you are done for. Instead - stand out from the crowd and talk to them in a totally different unique way which they do not expect.

11. Use case studies.

You should already have a key selection of customer personas along with a number of tailored and relevant case studies that resonate with your different types of prospects. At the drop of a hat, these case studies should be ready to be used by you to engage and persuade the prospect that much further to buy your product or service.

12. Go slow on your sales conversations.

Recent research suggests that when sales professionals speak at a slower pace, their prospects follow this pattern which ultimately increases the levels of engagement, empathy and interactions that they have together which in essence increases the possibility of the sale.

13. Do not speak for too long at any one time.

If you speak on a sales call for too long, the prospect will almost certainly switch off from the conversation and you will likely lose the chance of closing the sale. Always be cognisant of allowing the prospect to engage with you at every given opportunity i.e. talk with them, not to them.

14. Do not oversell at the end of your sales meetings.

Probably one of the worst things a salesperson can do is ask lots of great discovery questions to a prospect, uncover their major pain points, advise a cracking sales solution and then unravel all that excellent hard work by dropping a super hard guerrilla tactic ‘Closing bomb’ at the end of their sales call. If you've done your job properly within the earlier stages, you would have already laid the major groundwork to close the sale and this final off-putting ‘Close-at-all-costs’ bomb drop will not be necessary.

15. Do final feedback checks.

A great way to maximise your chances of closing a sale is to occasionally sprinkle a few short direct questions across your sales meeting or call - especially towards the end of the conversation. Questions such as ‘Does that make sense?’ or ‘Does that sound ok?’ can help you lay the seeds of defining a clear understanding of how interested the prospect is in your product or service. it also establishes a barometer of success and can uncover hidden objections as well as help you plan next steps.

16. Maintain regular discipline of structuring sales calls and meetings effectively.

To be a top salesperson, it's important to understand the disciplines you make in the entire sales cycle. Top salespeople regularly repeat these disciplines over and over again. Discipline is all about making the choice i.e. you can choose to make 50 calls each day and do your Linkedin due diligence on each prospect - or not. A consistent and regular discipline in a sales role will always maximise your performance and move you into a category of a top sales performer.

17. Do not worry about the things you cannot control, focus only on the things you can.

A fundamental aspect of successful sales is about maintaining a careful balance of persistence and graciousness when things might not be alwaying going to plan. Obviously we all want to smash our targets but this is not possible all the time and when rejection does happen from a prospect, it's important to understand that the rejection is not a reflection of the sales person but instead could not be the right time for our product or service. Hard work will always turn those negative scenarios into positive ones.

18. Use a measurable, repeatable sales process.

When working in sales it is crucial to embrace feedback, stay fluid, adaptable and be continuously learning from your wins and losses. That way you will stay on a path to becoming a sales professional that gets better and better. This open mindset organically allows top sales performers to build repeatable, scaleable steps in their sales process which they can regularly measure the success of in order to add improvements and tweaks on an ongoing basis.

19. Be honest.

As Hubspot mentions "The days of telling customers anything to close are over”. Power has shifted from companies to consumers and in the digital and social media era, any lie told can be quickly found out. For any salespeople or companies that go down this slippery slope, all that awaits them is a lack of trust and negative online reviews.

20. View your customer’s success as your own.

If your customer or clients succeeds, you succeed. If this attitude and level of service is applied to all aspects of the sales cycle then it can manifest itself into multiple forms of expanded success including repeat business, referrals and customer testimonials.