#020: 7 Sales Skills to Close New Deals

Read time: 5 minutes

Welcome to the Succession newsletter where you will improve your life science sales skills in 5 minutes per week. If you’re getting value from these newsletters, we'd love it if you could forward it along to your sales colleagues. If you’re new here, subscribe below.

This week we’re doing something a bit different.

I recorded a video on the 7 sales skills to close new deals.

These are foundational skills that will always work in sales no matter the economic climate or new advances in AI.

These aren’t fads or hacks.

If you master these 7 skills you will be a top-performing sales rep.

I know this because 90% of reps don’t take the time and effort to focus on these skills.

These reps look for shortcuts or new technologies to avoid putting in hard work. While this approach might provide good results in the short term, it's not sustainable in the long run. Inevitably, these tactics will fail or become less effective and your performance will suffer.

If you want a long successful career in sales where you can get paid a lot of money, it’s about masting and executing the fundamentals.

7 Sales Skills to Close New Deals

1. Prioritize growable accounts

2. Create magnetic messaging

3. Know your sales math

4. Commit to prospecting

5. Execute great discovery calls

6. Drive deals to close

7. Own your calendar

If you’re an individual rep and want to go deeper on any of these skills we have on-demand training and resources that cover each of these topics in depth.

If you’re a sales leader who’s frustrated with reps living in reactive mode and either not proactively generating new opportunities or letting prospects go dark, reach out to learn more about our team plans.

Do you wish you had a way to visit the websites of all the companies in your territory and:

• Get a description of what they do

• Find out what’s in their pipeline

• Create a hypothesis about how your offering could help

• Develop relevant sales messages to them

Clay.com is a powerhouse tool that can do all of this for you in minutes.

They have a free trial so you can test out different workflows. It can take a bit of practice and testing to get things right.

If you want help getting something like this setup, reach out to me.

1. Succession for Reps: A skill development platform for life science sales reps who want to improve their sales skills, exceed their quota, and take the next step in their career.

2. Succession for Teams: If you’re a sales leader who’s frustrated with reps living in reactive mode and either not proactively generating new opportunities or letting prospects go dark, reach out to learn more about our team plans.

3. Strategy Call: Need more than training? Want help implementing and executing your sales strategy? In a 30-minute call, we will assess your company’s current situation and identify growth opportunities.

4. Uncover Your Sales Blindspots: You know your sales team can do better but you're not sure where to start. This 20-question assessment is your path to clarity.