Top 17 Sales Advisor Skills to Stay Top in Your Job

Top 17 Sales Advisor Skills to Stay Top in Your Job

If you are looking to succeed in your career as a sales advisor, this post provides complete information of the skills and qualities you need to develop.

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Every company wants to be a household name both in the industry and in the marketplace.

As good as it sounds, it is not something easy to achieve. A lot of structures at the leadership are needed to make this a reality and one of those structures is the appointment of a sales advisor.

Who is a Sales Advisor?

A sales advisor is someone hired by a company or organization to oversee the development, planning, and implementation of sales strategies

So in summary, it is safe to say that the sales strategies of a company are the business of the sales advisor.

Best 17 Sales Advisor Skills and Qualities to Stay Top in Your Job and Career

The skills and qualities needed by a sales advisor to succeed in their career are majorly:

1. Customer Service Skills

The customers remain the most important arm of every organization. So they must be put in the equation of the company’s goal, and this must reflect in the way they should be addressed and treated.

This is where the customer service skill comes to play.

As a sales advisor, one skill you must have to be able to excel in your job is the customer service skill.

You are bound to keep in touch with customers always so you have to position your mind at all times to attend to their needs and request.

You have to understand that customers are interested in knowing how you treat them in areas of time of delivery of your services, your body language, and your pattern of communication.

So take note of these things and reinvent/coach your team to be better in the aspect of taking care of customer needs.

2. Good Presentation Skills

How you present your ideas to both the customers and your employers is important.

Your ideas are not enough but how you present them can make a whole lot of difference.

You have to take note of this fact and improve yourself in the area of public presentation.

First in this category is public presentation to your employers.

Your employers want to know your ability to convey your ideas and how convincing your ideas are.

This will help them know how to support you in your job.

Second in this category is your presentation skill to your customers.

You have to sound convincing about your services to the customers.

Note that customers are not ready to stake their support if you are not convincing when approaching them about the products you are talking about.

3. Coaching Skills

As a sales advisor, your major role in the company is in advisory capacity.

This means that you are more of an adviser or a coach. Your duty is majorly to build your company through your expertise in the advisory role.

You need to be able to teach your team what to do.

Coaching skill is very vital to your survival in your job because with it you can reproduce people who can help make your job easier.

Being the leader of your team is a great opportunity to make your department a great one. You have to develop this skill with all seriousness.

4. Problem Solving Skills

What do you do when you are faced with problems as a sales advisor? Or better still how do you react to problems emanating from the company’s sales department?

You have to find a way to proffer solutions to problems in relation to your job.

These problems can be personal. Personal in the sense that you have challenges you face by reason of being in that job.

You have options like either quitting the job or finding a solution to it.

If you are to go with the latter, then you have to reinvent yourself to solve those problems.

Also, the company you serve as a sales advisor to will definitely be in dire need of your inputs when problems arise.

This problem will always mainly be related to the sales of the product. If there are issues like this, then you need to stand up to the challenge and show your expertise.

5. People Management Skills

As a sales advisor, one skill you can’t do without is people management skill.

Do you know that the people working with you in that department have a lot of roles to play in your success?

This is very true and worthy of note.

Managing people has never been an easy task, but yet remains a vital leadership skill to have.

When you are a coach or leader of your team, you have to bring the best out of the people working with you in that department.

If you must bring out the best in people, especially in the sales department of your company, then motivation is one thing you cannot do without.

Motivating the team and making them understand the importance of giving their best is a good way of managing people.

6. Organizational Skill

How good are you in organization? You have to ask yourself that question from time to time.

Sometimes, you need to walk up to people in the workplace and ask them to evaluate your organizational skills, and from there know where to improve on.

Working with a good team of sales personnel and being there advisor requires a good deal of organizational skill.

You need to show the team what should be done and the procedures they will need to follow to make things work in the department.

When organizing people in the capacity of a sales advisor, be sure that the idea you are bringing on board is proven and not merely a thought that has not been proven yet because if it does not work, then your credibility will be questioned.

7. Strategic Planning

Strategic planning is needed from you as a sales advisor. Someone in this role is more of an instructor or a coach.

So, you are always required to bring up powerful ideas to help improve the company’s sales.

Strategic planning is one way you can bring out the best ideas needed to grow the company.

You have to give the company a road map to increased sales. This road map should be strategic and good enough to make the goals of the company become a reality in no time.

Strategic planning proceeds in depth research and findings through intentional search for solutions.

When you investigate problems related to sales and draw your conclusions based on your observations, the next thing is the line of action which is the plan you bring up.

8. Versatility

This is important to you as a sales advisor. Versatility is one skill you should have under your belt.

This means that you have the ability to function in different roles in the sales department.

Versatility is a good idea.

When you are versatile, you have good knowledge of the different roles in the department and possibly what it takes to succeed in those roles.

This will help you become more competent and effective in your role as the sales advisor of your company.

Versatility is needed in your job description as you might be needed to shoulder a related role in the company, may be due to lack of adequate manpower or skill personnel in certain roles.

So, having this skill can make you a better fit for several roles in your company, which makes you more valuable than your colleagues.

9. Communication Skills

Your ability to communicate well in your company will help solve a lot of problems.

You might be tempted to ask how, but be rest assured that communication is very vital to any organization you might find yourself either now or later on in the future.

As an advisor, you should be a guru in communication, in the sense that it should be your thing and not something you overlook.

It is important to note that communication is needed both in and outside the workplace.

You have to update your employer about your activities and also the challenges you are facing in the course of carrying out your job.

This will help your employer know what to do to solve those problems.

This also helps keep the employer informed on the state of the department.

10. Confidence

Your confidence level most times is what is more convincing than the contents of your words.

Being a good sales advisor entails showcasing good confidence level, which should be able to convince both your employer and your colleagues to buy into your idea, particularly when you have ideas that might not be popular to the company.

Your ability to convince your boss and your colleagues is largely dependent on your confidence level.

However, don’t be overconfident about anything because your predictions can still be wrong.

One factor that can aid your confidence is constant improvement.

These improvements are products of constant research and application of useful knowledge gained through research.

Stagnancy does not help your confidence, rather it hurts it.

11. Research Skills

Searching for knowledge is not a simple issue. It requires dedication and doggedness.

You pay some price for reasonable knowledge and that knowledge will always be beneficial at the end of everything.

So, as a sales advisor, you have to gain useful knowledge in regards to your job and that will have to be through a structured search for knowledge.

This structured search for knowledge is what we call research.

For you to gain useful knowledge, your search for it should be structured, timely, and purposeful.

You need to have a good reason to embark on any research that has to do with your job.

One good research you can do is research on the state of the industry and what militates the growth of the company, as well as ways to tackle those challenges.

As earlier stated, this research must be well structured, timely, and purposeful to achieve the desired objective.

12. Knowledge of Company Laws

A good sales advisor should have good knowledge of some laws that guide operational activities of companies in a given geographical area.

He/she is expected to be abreast with recent changes in these laws and also should have the ability to interpret these laws and how they affect the company.

The essence of this is to help the company align and adjust its operations to meet up with the standards set for them by the government.

When you are not in touch with recent laws, then your company will somehow suffer the consequences and that’s not a good way to remain relevant in your job.

Another important reason to be conversant with the relevant laws is for quality control.

In every society, there is a standard set for every industry. When you are intimated with the recent laws, rules, and regulations, you will be able to inform the company and help it escape fines and other adverse impositions from the government of the day.

13. Understanding of the Trend in the Marketplace

The trend in the marketplace will continue to change every day. This is not something that should trouble you as a sales advisor.

One thing you should be able to do is to constantly keep in touch with latest trends in the marketplace.

These changes in the marketplace trend are products of change in the taste of the consumers, as well as the introduction of technology in the marketplace.

You need to make your research and know what the trend is all about; what caused it and what your company can do to adjust to the trend.

In regards to trends caused by change in the taste of the consumers, you have to carry out your research properly to know what exactly the customers want at the moment.

You have to employ channels through which you can get feedback from your customers and respond appropriately to those feedbacks.

14. Leadership Skill

As a sales advisor, your job is that of a leader. Do not forget this. You are a leader in that department and therefore must act as one.

In your department and the company as a whole, your leadership skills must be spot on and on point always.

What are some of the leadership skills you need to exhibit as a sales advisor?

There are many leadership skills you need to have and they include: being proactive, conflict resolution, courage etc. These are some of the skills you need to have as a leader.

Most importantly is for you to lead by example in the workplace. You should be a good example of what other colleagues should know about work ethics.

Show them what it means to be productive in the workplace and not just a talker or a “commander”.

15. Motivation

Motivation is a key factor in every success you will experience in your job.

Motivation is important because it is like a vehicle that drives you daily to achieving your personal goals as a sales advisor.

Your level of motivation is important to how far you can succeed in your job.

Generally speaking, most employees are mainly motivated by the pay check they get, but this is something that may not last for long.

If you are only motivated by what you can earn in monetary terms then your motivation is hanging by a thread.

What should motivate you more is what you can achieve personally in the future.

This will help you work harder and smarter knowing full well that as you improve so is your relevance improving with time.

Let your motivation be to aim for the top and not just what you currently earn.

16. Open-mindedness

As good as you might think you are, you need to understand that you are not perfect at least not yet.

There is still room for improvement. You have to be humble and coachable in order to get to the top of the chart in your industry.

One way to do this is to be open-minded. By this we mean making room for feedback and reactions from people in regards to what you are doing.

This is necessary for your improvement as well as your advancement in your job.

When you listen to people’s opinion, you have to compare and contrast it with what you are currently doing and know where to apply some changes to your activities.

This requires that you have the understanding that there is a lot for you to improve on.

17. Critical Thinking

To be able to solve strong problems in the company, you have to keep improving your thinking capacity.

You should be able to think outside the box and beyond the convention of doing things around you.

You need to be extraordinary in your thinking.

As a sales advisor, critical thinking should be something you should be accustomed to.

When you develop the attitude of deep thinking, you learn to think well before you utter any word in serious matters relating to your job.

If you can’t think deeply or analyze problems beyond what the view of everyone is, then you may not be able to go beyond their ideas.

So, it is up to you to develop your thinking to go beyond the convention human thinking.

Your thinking should show your level of expertise in your job. You should be able to see what other people may not see. This is a test of your expertise.

Sales Advisor Skills for Resume

If you are a sales advisor writing a resume, you can apply the above skills and qualities in writing the core competence or skills section of your resume.

But before you apply them, be sure that you actually have them.

You will be increasing your chances of being hired for the sales advisor position by showing the recruiter in your resume that you have the major qualities and skills that they require to be effective on the job.

Conclusion

In this post, we have been able to see who a sales advisor is and what job he/she is meant to do in any company that he/she works with.

It also shows the major skills and qualities you will need to have if you must be an effective sales advisor.

The skills and qualities above have the capacity to make you highly valued, not only in the company but also in the industry.