Job in Sales. Help!

[UnicornMug]

Do you think anyone can learn to be good at it? And how? I really need this job. But I'm socially awkward and not good at small talk so I know I need to learn fast. Any tips?

I have been in Sales for over 20 years.
I have set up and trained sales teams as well
My view on it is that you can teach people the skills needed but you do have to have the raw material. This isn’t necessarily being loud or over confident but being socially awkward isn’t ideal to be honest
You need very good listening skills and to be able to create empathy quickly at a minimum I would say.
Feel free to ask me anything else if you think I can help

I can listen well and empathise. I just don't know how to build that instant rapport/ friendship that I see others doing.

We also have to ask clients about 6 questions to find out if the product is suitable. Others somehow make it look like a normal conversation and not a scripted tick box exercise. I really don't know how that's possible!
I have asked to shadow one of the best performers and it will be for a week sometime mid January. But I really need to improve before then.

The key is not to try and be someone you aren’t. Listen to what others say but don’t say anything that feels completely unnatural to you
I was training someone last week on a live Zoom meeting and afterwards they said they could never say something I had said to the customer - in which case they shouldn’t
The training is to give you a framework but you need to hang your own personality on it or it will always sound scripted, which doesn’t work.

I worked in sales for ten years. I had a lot of training and coaching. You can learn techniques but there's something more that you need to have (or rather not have) and the more coaching i had, the more i felt i was not cut out for hard selling

Yes I agree
Try your best OP and you might find you are really good at it but Sales isn’t for everyone.
The most successful people aren’t the ones you might think though. I am training someone at the moment who is quite quiet and very calm but he has absolutely loads of potential. I have also tried to train plenty of over the top gobshites who have been rubbish.

Is it software sales?

No but similar where you need technical knowledge as well as sales skills. I have all the technical side.

Some people can move from the technical side into the Sales side and good product knowledge is important in Sales but you need to translate the features you know into real tangible benefits to the client.
Tell them what it does, not what it is