The Best Sales Tips for Recent Grads Starting a Sales Career

Your first sales job out of college can be daunting. Even with our extensive paid trader training program, there’s still quite a learning curve at the beginning of your sales career. In today’s blog, we discuss some of the best sales tips for recent grads to help you set yourself up for sales success!

Know Your Product

When you’re starting your sales career, it’s natural to look for magic sales tricks that will increase your sales with minimal effort. But the truth is, if you don’t understand the ins and outs of your product, even the most tried and true sales tactics won’t be of any use to you. That’s why one of the best sales tips for new traders is to learn everything there is to know about the product you’re selling. At AIFP, we understand that this is a lengthy process, which is why we offer our 12-month trader training program. But even with our program, learning the intricacies of what you’re selling is going to take extra time and effort, so be prepared for the first few years of your sales career to be the most challenging.

Build Relationships

Even if you don’t have a lot of sales experience, you already have real world experience building relationships with others. You can use this experience, as well as soft skills like curiosity, empathy, and clear communication to build genuine relationships with leads. Start by building rapport with potential leads by finding common interests and hobbies, just as you would a potential friend or partner. From there, ask questions to better understand their experience (curiosity), consider how these experiences affect their livelihood (empathy), and share how your product can help solve their problem (communication). Remember, by being friendly, professional, helpful, and dependable, you’re more likely to earn your leads’ trust and favor over time.

Focus On Your Customer’s Goals

Any good salesperson has goals—whether they’re company sales quotas they’re trying to hit or a personal sales goal they’ve set for themselves—but focusing too much on your own goals can make you seem aggressive or even desperate. Instead, you need to figure out your customer’s goals and do everything in your power to help them reach them. By putting the focus on how your product could solve some of their pain points and positively impact their bottom line, you’ll be better prepared to successfully sell your product and to overcome their sales objections.

Don’t Take Rejection Personally

One of the best sales tips for recent grads is to learn to deal with rejection. Rejection is completely unavoidable in a sales career, and the more resilience you have in the face of that rejection, the better. But not taking rejection personally can be easier said than done. One way to do so is by focusing on the positives. If, for example, you don’t make the sale, rather than focusing on that, focus on which part of the sales process went well. Perhaps you did a great job at connecting with the client or you felt like your product explanation was especially clear. Whatever happened, there are plenty of a reasons a client might say no and many of them have absolutely nothing to do with you. Another way to flip the script is to try to reach a certain level of rejections each week. That way, getting a rejection will actually get you closer to your goals.

Always Follow Up

Not only does this mean following up on every opportunity that comes your way, but it also means following up at every level of communication. Respond to every email and check-in whenever someone doesn’t respond to your communication. You should also be sure to do everything you’ve promised to do in the time frame that you’ve offered to do it. If something comes up that prevents this from happening, be upfront with them about a more realistic time frame. Don’t just hope that they won’t notice if something is a day or two late. Looking for a job where you can use these sales tips for beginners? Apply today for our paid trader training program where you’ll learn everything you need to kickstart your trading career. In the meantime, check out the AIFP blog where we cover everything from how to prepare for a career fair to what AIFP traders think you should know about our paid apprenticeship program.