4 Skills All Marketers Should Have
The activity of marketing and selling lies at the center of all businesses to customer companies and most business to business companies.
If you’re an entrepreneur, it is crucial that you understand the basics of marketing to understand precisely how your company is going to make its money – who your clients or customers will be and how they like to buy products or services. If you aren’t an entrepreneur but work in the sales side of a business, you’ll understand the importance of developing your abilities as a marketer, especially if your job involves commission. Without at least one skilled marketer, it is unlikely that a for-profit organization or even a non-profit will succeed.
The Ability to Analyze
The process of selling, or developing a selling strategy (which what marketing is at its core), requires receiving information and deciding on the best course of action.
Marketers receive a lot of data every day, from facts featured in the news to rumors in the office. Marketers need to be able to take this information and analyze how legitimate and useful it may be. They then need to be able to translate this information into a useful approach to making a sale.
The Ability to Understand the Buyer
Without being able to understand what your buyer requires, wants and needs, it is highly unlikely that you will be able to make any sales.
This includes their personal journeys with your product. Having good emotional intelligence is a vital aspect of this, as it will allow you to pick up on reactions to prices or proposals and amend your selling strategy. You may be able to gauge your skill for emotional and social understanding by completing a Bar-On Emotional Intelligence Quotient test, which can help you in isolating the areas you may want to improve.
The Ability to Negotiate
If you’re personally making sales to anybody, negotiation is a skill you cannot do without.
Most negotiations end with both parties feeling like they have secured a great deal, so it can be very difficult to understand when and if your negotiation skills are lacking. Skilled negotiators can isolate the values of the deal that are on the table and claim more value than their opponent.
This can be a difficult task, and requires a lot of research and studying. You may want to think about negotiation lessons, and Forbes recommends KARRASS seminars.
Confidence
Believing in the product or service that you are selling is the only way to make your customer or client believe in that produce or service. Displaying confidence in a subtle, approachable manner can increase the trust that people have in you and, if they genuinely feel like you are being nice with genuine kindness and not just trying to make a sale, can increase how much customers or clients like you and use your company’s services.
The best marketers have these abilities in spades, and will not be afraid to use their skills in any combination they need to make the sale or market the product. With tenacity and a great personality, improving your marketeering skills can give your company and your performance a welcome boost.
