Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a sales assistant and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.
A Sales Assistant is responsible for supporting the sales and marketing managers by tracking, investigating and reporting sales information, resolving problems.
The primary duties of this role include preparing sales presentations by compiling data, developing presentation formats and materials, maintaining promotional database by inputting invoice and bill-back data, safeguarding customer database by inputting customer biography and updates, preparing and distributing monthly reports, updating managers by consolidating, analyzing and forwarding daily action summaries, resolving order and inventory problems by investing data and history, identifying alternate means for the filing warrants, notifying managers and customers, providing product, promotion and pricing information by clarifying customer request, selecting appropriate information, forwarding information as well as answering questions.
Core Skills Required to be a Sales Assistant
Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.
Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.
A sales assistant should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.
Customer Oriented:
Customer Oriented is a skill that focuses primarily on the client as the King offering quality services that meet the customer's expectations with an aim to inspire people rather than just try to sell their product.
A Sales Assistant needs to be customer oriented to boost the image of their company, stand out from the rest of the people and devise innovations of tomorrow that focus its sights on a new target ? satisfying the customer expectations.
Presentation Skills:
Presentation Skills are useful in getting your message or opinion out there in many aspects of life and work, though they are mostly used in businesses, sales, teaching, lecturing, and training.
A Sales Assistant must develop the confidence and capability to offer excellent presentations and captivate the audience when the need arises; it requires a lot of preparation to stand out from the crowd, and a manager should be willing to invest in it.
Problem Solving:
Problem Solving is the skill of defining a problem to determine its cause, identify it, prioritize and select alternative solutions to implement in solving the problems and reviving relationships.
A Sales Assistant has a fundamental role in finding ways to address all types of problems through having a good method to use when approaching a problem without being ineffective, favoring or causing painful consequences.
Seeing Potential Problems:
Seeing Potential Problems is the ability to structure the current situations and identify developments that could cause problems in the future.
A Sales Assistant needs to see potential problems before they occur and work to stop them early enough, he also has to stay ahead of the flow not to be caught you by upcoming issues that could be easily prevented if they were noted soon enough.
Sales Ability:
Sales Ability is the skill to understand your product's features and being able to present their benefits accurately and persuasively to the customers.
A Sales Assistant must bring up a team that is enthusiastic and passionate about their products as well as eager and confident to share the benefits with the waiting market using conventional and creative sources of information that the company has come up with.
Customer Service:
Customer Service is the ability to cater for the needs of the client by providing excellent customer service without compromise.
A Sales Assistant must understand that pleasing customers is directly connected to the success of the business, therefore, must create a superior customer experience culture in the company that every employee should follow in ensuring all the customers are treated as they should.
Training others:
Training is the ability to expand the knowledge base by learning new truths that are useful in the workplace.
A Sales Assistant needs to creatively schedule training for his employees in a focused manner that will allow the employee stay useful in the workplace and get new knowledge so that both the business and the worker not suffer from delays and work related stress.
Writing Reports and Proposals:
Writing Reports and Proposals is the ability to record business reports and plans for the company or project following the policies and procedures of the company.
A Sales Assistant should, therefore, emphasize the need and accuracy of these reports and plans to ensure they are delivered promptly, and the details within are accurate adhering to the company's policies and regulations without compromise.
Data Entry:
Data Entry is a skill to key in information from various sources as directed by the management while keeping to the policies and procedures of the company and ensuring they are accurate.
A Sales Assistant should prioritize hard skills over educational backgrounds when it comes to data entry because experience and familiarity with the common workplace software, attention to detail, confidentiality and databases is critical.
Product Knowledge:
Product Knowledge is an essential sales skill to understand the features of your product allowing you to present the benefits compellingly and accurately to the customer.
A Sales Assistant should ensure the teams understand the company's goods or services and can quickly take a client through them, therefore, instilling faith, trust and respect in the customers which in turn creates a positive customer experience.
Hard Skills Required to be a Sales Assistant
Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.
Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.
A sales assistant should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.