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Sales is a difficult, but very rewarding industry. Getting ahead in Sales is even harder. However, by boarding your skills, listening proactively, knowing your value and how best to sell yourself, you can leap frog your opposition.

Here are our FOUR tips on How to advance your career in Sales

1. Broaden your skills

Look for ways to expand your knowledge by reading new trade material, going to conferences or taking on new projects that interest you. It’s all about enthusiastic, focused and continued learning.

Following different pursuits can provide you with vital leadership, experiences and expertise in new fields, not only benefiting you, but your team and company. Making you a go-to source.

Whether you are looking for the next step in your career or to progress in the company you’re in, an employer will always be impressed with someone who can demonstrate curiosity, initiative and flexibility to take on new challenges.

2. Listen proactively

For opportunities

Listen out for signs of opportunity and express your interest before they become available. You can ask your boss for advice on what you can be doing right now to get the job you want in the future, ask the top sellers for mentoring and ask to lead some upcoming presentations and meetings.

To gain knowledge

Listen to your clients and learn what they are learning. Read about anything you can find that might affect the industry, their business and the future of their business. Not only will this add value t you, it will add value to your company and your conversations on the product or service.

To explore cues

When having a conversation or presentation with a client make sure to follow their cues. If they are showing interest in a certain part of the product or service, come away from your script and focus on what is interesting them. This will help you to understand where to take the conversation next and whether they want to buy from you or not.

Similarly, if you can tell that they are not interested, change your approach and try and gain back their interest.

3. Know your value

By focusing solely on one career path, it’s easy to forget the real value you provide. Widen your perspective and have a look around your organisation or job market, you might discover there are gaps within the business that you can fill and are a better fit for you.

Taking your own initiative to improve your career will help you in the long run, making you more appealing to new employers when you want to take the next step.

4. Know how to sell yourself

Articulate your value

You can have a great CV along with experience in respected organisations with great references, but if you are not able to articulate your accomplishments and show self-awareness in what you are good at, you may not be giving yourself the best chance.

Be confident

In an interview or meeting, be mindful of how you discuss your work. Speaking about your performance in a self-critical way such as “I need to be doing more of this” or “I need to be doing more of that” has a negative resulting perception. Go out of your way to speak about your successes with confidence.

Developing your career in sales means going beyond what is usually asked of you, if you have the ambition and drive to do so, you can go far. For advice on your next career move you can give us a call or have a look through our available sales roles.

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When starting a new career it’s not always easy knowing where you should start. That’s why we’ve put together a small guide to help aspiring sales professionals to get their foot in the door.

Find your niche

Finding your niche is simply finding the place where you are best fitted. You can figure out what type of sales you are interested in by thinking about products and services you are personally interested or have knowledge in. The more passionate you are about what you are selling, the more likely you are to be successful.

Research your niche

What is happening in the industry? Who are the leading people / companies? Why and how are they different from the rest? What are the latest developments in the product or service?

Spending some time researching your niche to get a real understanding of what is going on. Look for any areas where you see opportunities for improvements, and companies that are above the rest, offering the most compelling products. Research there options further and look for opportunities within them. As you begin to understand your niche, you should start to have a good understanding for what options show the best promise.

Get prepared

A good sales person should be able to listen as well as they are able to talk. Find reputable resources and familiarise yourself with different sales methods, techniques and tools. There are many great books and blogs that will give you a basic grasp on how it’s done.

Once you’re in the office, you will be able to recognise and put into practice the things you’ve learnt. Look out for the best performing person and observe what they do.

Understanding your direction and working on your skills will help you to fins and be successful in starting a career in sales. But it is just as important to continue this practice to continue to further and improve your standing within sales.

Feel you’re ready for the jump? We have a number of sales roles available immediately, check them out via our vacancies list or give us a call on 01376 503567 to speak with one of our friendly consultants today.

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Having the opportunity to motivate and inspire the people around you is an incredibly rewarding position to be in, but how do you go about managing your team effectively?

1. Set the Example

Your team will be looking to you for an example of how things are meant to be done, so it’s important to lead by example and behave in a professional manner. This doesn’t just stop with your behaviour, it includes completing your job to a high standard and continuing to develop yourself to further support your colleague’s needs.

2. Get to know everyone on your team

It’s important to get to know each one of your team members individually, not only does this help to ensure mutual respect and form stronger bonds, you will get a better understanding of their personal strengths and discover how everyone’s individual skills will work together in the best way.

3. Map out goals and timelines

Having set goals and timelines will keep your team members on schedule and help them from losing sight of their tasks and responsibilities. It will also create a sense of individual accountability which leads to a more cohesive team.

4. Review performances

Set up regular meetings with each individual to see how they are getting on, go over their progress & work load and review their goals and timelines, adjust if needed. This time should be set aside for productive and positive discussions, if there’s a negative, turn it into a positive by creating a solution to the problem.

5. Celebrate your team / companies achievements together

Organise a lunch outside of the office and celebrate when you’ve done well, not only does this create stronger bonds which lead to a better working environment; it shows your appreciation of your team’s hard work.

6. Encourage your team to work together & promote a sharing environment

Utilise your team’s diverse range of skills and encourage them to work together, this way each skillset will be shared and learnt around the team, bringing something new to everyone and making it more likely for team members to jump in whenever they feel they can bring value.

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Employees are the lifeblood of your business, but in today’s competitive world there’s always the worry you may lose them. But how do you keep hold of something so vital? We believe there are 4 key factors you need to invest your efforts in.

1. Recruitment

The first step is to recruit well, it sounds obvious, but recruitment is often overlooked when talking about staff retention. It’s about taking on people with the right skills, abilities and experience that want to deploy these in the interests of your business. Train them about the culture of the business; make them proud of the company and their place within it.

2. The Relationship with Management

It’s important for your staff to know that management cares about them. Giving them your time with regular meetings and showing a genuine interest by listening and acting upon, goes a long way to having an employee that is appreciative and loyal.

3. The Environment and Facilities

People need to feel comfortable in their environment to perform well. If your staff are sitting down all day make sure you invest in good chairs, if they are running around the warehouse all day make sure they are provided with the right shoes or a relaxing break room. Investing in these simple things are essential to the staff’s performance, and staff performing well are happy staff.

We’ve all experienced sore feet from the wrong shoes or a bad back from the office chair that no one wants, how productive were you on that day?

4. The Perks

Health benefits, team building events, after work drinks and development programmes all have a massive impact on how your employees feel within the company. Whether it’s bringing your team closer together or making sure they feel valued, perks are a positive motivation for your staff. You get this right and no one will want to leave.

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We live in a world where change is inevitable, and that is just as prevalent in the Recruitment industry. AI (Artificial Intelligence) is something we’re seeing more and more of throughout the world and its different industries, this is no different for recruitment. But how exactly is AI affecting the industry and what can we expect for the future?

Before we tackle that question, let’s remind ourselves exactly what AI is:

“AI (artificial intelligence) is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. These processes include learning (the acquisition of information and rules for using the information), reasoning (using rules to reach approximate or definite conclusions) and self-correction. Particular applications of AI include expert systems, speech recognition and machine vision.”

AI in recruitment is now considered as one of the next generations in a smarter, more efficient and hassle-free hiring cycle.

But what does that statement actually mean? Why is it considered that? Let’s look at what AI could be doing for the recruitment industry:

Candidate Sourcing

Candidate sourcing is one of the first and most obvious areas that could be affected by AI. The time required to find quality and suitable candidates is a time consuming and difficult task.

Using AI at this point would immediately allow you to reduce the time taken at the sourcing stage. Returning a number of valid candidates for various roles at a time, meaning the time that has been saved can now be allocated to another stage of the recruitment process.

Candidate Screening / Matching

Candidate screening is an extremely important, but also time consuming task. An employer can often receive hundreds of CVs for each of their vacancies, and it is now said that on average an employer spends 7 seconds screening each CV.

AI can be used to automate this process. By knowing exactly what skills and experiences you need from an applicant, it can quickly, and efficiently process all of your CVs for each vacancy and then providing a more relevant pile of CVs for the employer to check themselves. AI can offer recommendations on new hires!

Having this part of the process automated will allow employers to focus their time on priorities such as speaking directly with shortlisted candidates and screening them in a more personal fashion (face to face / telephone) that AI wouldn’t be able to assist with.

The future is bright for the recruitment industry, and if taken advantage of properly, AI could have a huge impact on the industry.

This is just two small parts to the recruitment process that AI could already have a massive impact on. The time & money saved from incorporating AI into these early stages could be massive, so it is very interesting to imagine what else AI could do to support the recruitment industry.

We’re already seeing AI branch into the recruitment industry through companies like Sniper AI and Textkernal who’re using AI to parse information from CVs and recommend candidates based on their suitability to the roles.

What does a recruiter actually do? It’s time to clear a few things up.

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Have you ever wondered what a recruiter actually does? We’ve written this article to help answer that question.

We’re often asked “What do you actually do?” or “Do you just send CVs you have found online?”, this isn’t the case. It takes a lot more than a quick internet search to find a qualified, dedicated and invested employee.

Being recruiters, we believe that to find the right person for a role you need to dedicate quite a lot of time and resources to the task. You also need to have a clear understanding of who you are and what you’re looking for and be able to communicate and sell this to a prospective employee.

Looking for a job has changed, and so has the way recruiters source candidates. It is not about making 100 calls a day and it is certainly not just about looking for CVs online. So what exactly is the recruitment process?

1. It is all about you; the employer.

The first port of call is all about understanding you, the employer, and understanding exactly who / what you’re looking for in an employee. You know better than anyone else who would fit the business, and it is our job to get that information out of you (don’t worry; it’s not an interrogation, just a friendly chat).

2. Details, Details, Details!

Now we move onto the position itself; here we want to learn as much about the role as possible. The information gathered at this stage really varies depending on the complexity / level of the role, but we spare no detail.

Together we will build a job specification for the intended role, we can include as much (or as little) information as you like – but this is a very important stage. This job specification will be put out onto all of our available job boards and social platforms, the better the content, the better the reach and engagement of the advert.

3. The Company – Let’s do a little research …

Not only is it important we know you, the employer, but it is important that we know the company we’re working with. To properly understand if a candidate has the correct skill set for your role, we must know exactly what it is the business does.

We spend time getting to know the business. We do this through individual research and (with your permission) by speaking to your current employers who’re already working within a similar position at the company.

4. Let’s get Advertising!

As a recruiter, we have access to hundreds of job boards. But that doesn’t mean we’re going to post it on all of them. Your role is specific to a certain audience, so the job boards that we choose will be specific to your role also.

You might get more applications if we posted to all of them, but 90% of them will be irrelevant, we want to get the best applicants for your business, but we also want them to be relevant. So we choose the right job boards, for your role.

5. Phone Calls – Yep, we do still do this.

OK, OK… we do still make phone calls. But it’s not just someone ringing 100’s of people a day asking “if they’re looking for a job”!

Our calls are targeted only to job seekers whose profession matches your job specification. But hang on, this call is more than finding out about their interest in the role, it’s getting a feel for the person on the other end of the phone. I suppose you could look at it like a pre-interview, does this persons personality match their CV, we’re not only looking for someone with the right skills for your business, but someone who is going to fit in with your current employees.

6. We have a database, do you?

Are we flexing a little here? No, of course not! It’s just a fact. We have a database of thousands of professionals within the Logistics sector(s). Every candidate we have is vetted through our registration process and permission to hold their data in regulation with the GDPR act is held.

We already know a percentage of professionals who’re seeking for work and exactly when they’re available. Every candidate is kept ‘warm’, which means we’re in constant contact with them, following up with their job search.

7. That’s a lot of CVs …

On average, an employer spends 5-7 seconds looking at a CV; this is due to the sheer amount of CVs that are received for a role. We have a team that dedicates time to looking through the CVs that are received for your roles, we cover every point in order to determine if this candidate could be suitable for your company or not.

Not only that, our team has access to a number of large CV databases where they can conduct searches for relevant job seekers that you normally wouldn’t have access too.

We don’t believe in sending you every CV we receive, we handpick a few candidates who, after our vetting process, we feel would be perfect for your business.

8. Time for some Preparation!

An interview has been booked! But our job isn’t finished yet. It’s time to prepare the candidate. We talk the candidate through the whole interview process and prepare them as best we can.

Interview preparation is important, so we’ll help the candidate as much as possible and talk them through step-by-step what to expect.

9. We’re not perfect …

Sometimes, no matter how hard we try, something can go wrong. An interview that goes terribly, a candidate not turning up to their interview, a placement falling through or potential candidates being sent over not being up to spec; it’s a tough business.

However, rest-assured, we will do our utmost to correct any failing that might occur and will work side-by-side with you to fix any issues that you might have. We’re human, just speak to us.