You probably already put in at least 40 hours a week at your sales job. While you would definitely like to sharpen your sales skills and learn some new tips and techniques, you are not wild about the idea of spending even more time at the office or commuting on weekends to classes devoted to the topic.
Here’s some great news: hard-working and devoted sales people like you can definitely work on improving your skills, all without having to leave home.
There are a number of online and flexible classes, tools and side gigs that can give you the practice you need to sharpen those sales skills of yours. Here’s how:
1. Online Sales Training
There are a variety of online sales training courses that you can register for and complete from home—all from the comfort of your couch or kitchen table. For example, the Sales Coaching Institutes features a full suite of online sales training courses that will help you to stay abreast of current training techniques and improve your performance at work.
Online programs usually teach practical sales skills and selling techniques that focus on one key area at a time. The courses include access to videos, tests, pop quizzes, Executive White Papers and eBooks, and they cover everything from customer-focused selling and trends in sales to how the customer buying cycle works and much more.
2. Side Gig Sales Experience
If you want to sharpen your sales skills but are not excited about pulling overtime with the boss hovering around you, you can take matters into your own hands by finding a flexible, at-home sales job. For instance, you could partner with a direct sales company like Amway, and spend early mornings, nights, weekends and holidays getting in plenty of practice selling the company’s many products.
If you are unfamiliar with direct sales and how they work, the term is actually pretty self-explanatory; you sell products directly to others and get paid when you make a sale. Unlike pyramid schemes, which are often a form of financial fraud, Amway’s direct sales model doesn’t pay its Independent Business Owners to recruit others. For more tips from Amway about pyramid scheme facts, visit the company’s website. There you’ll learn more about your opportunity to gain effective and much-needed sales experience.
3. Try Role Playing
If you feel like your potential customers’ eyes start to glaze over when you start in with your sales pitch, it might be time to do some solid role playing with trusted friends or family members. Role play has been used for hundreds of years in theaters and acting studios to improve performances, so there is no reason why you can’t do the same. While it is probably ideal to use people with sales knowledge and experience when role playing, it is not necessary.
Basic skills that can help you in your job like trying not to stammer when speaking and making better eye contact can be done in role playing sessions with your BFF, brother or good friend from down the street. Invite your role playee over for coffee or dessert and practice your skills with a supportive audience—you’ll probably notice a tangible improvement in your performance at work.
4. Meet Your Goals in the Sales Department
It’s nice to know that you don’t have to slave away even more at work or drive for hours to attend crowded lectures to sharpen your sales skills. By taking a sales side gig, taking an online class and role playing right in your living room, your sales skills will be well honed, all from the comfort of home.