What are some tips that can help me become a more effective salesperson?

Find a product you love and company that will invest and believe in you. Be honest.  Have integrity.  Be sincere. Don't be afraid.  The worst that can happen is you fail.  There's always more people to call and email. Follow Pareto's Principle whenever possible.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle  (Not every deal is worth chasing.) Don't give discounts today for revenue promised in the future. People's time is valuable. Be succinct and compelling. Study your craft, industry and competition. And finally, remember that the better salesperson is always sending one more email, making one more phone call, reading one more book or article than you. Don't let them beat you.

Smile, sincerity, honesty, go the extra mile for customers, and actually believe that what your selling is going to help people

Share your knowledge online. Nowadays most buying processes start at Google so you can wait long or be found immediately.

I really likes answer and those before (not every deal is worth chasing, or as I say, no point poking a dead body). It depends if you are after "tips" (as in your question) or more generic perspective. I'll try both in here. Firstly, train yourself. That's the first biggest tip / advice / recommendation I would give. It's amazing how we can get degrees for pretty much all professions in the world from marketing, finance, psychology, you name it... Expect for one area: sales. Because there is this widely held belief that in sales, one just needs to be going along with people, persistent, enthusiastic, good at pitching (aka deliver one sided presentation), etc... Sadly, that's not quite the case, there is a way of doing it. Very much like Chris, I trained myself (aka invested time and money). I used to dislike sales. I am now (for my sins) quite passionate about sales. Here are a few things I've understood and apply on a constant basis: 1- At the highest level, people only buy for two reasons. Either to move towards pleasure (restaurant, holidays, etc...) or to move away from a pain, a pain they feel right now or they know is coming. In B2B, we are more into the latter than the former. So the whole sales conversation you need to lead is to identify the pain of the prospect and if these are pains you can help with. You might not. In which case, close the conversation, move on. 2- A no is ok: There is this belief that sales people have to be aggressive. So, prospect are reacting to this and are more often than not not telling the truth. I find that sharing with a prospect, right from the start and throughout the engagement, that "a no is ok" or that "we can close the conversation after our meeting, that would be fine", I lift that fear that people have of having to deal with "aggressive" sales people. Sales is a mutual engagement to assess if two business people, one with a pain, one with a possible solution, can do business. 3- Have a process . My process is Pain assessment / People / Money / Fulfilment / After sales. In long and complex sales, these are steps that need to be taken at all interaction. If you do not have a process, you will fall into the process of your prospect and, in my world, prospect believe that the salesperson time is a commodity that can easily be fool around with. Fulfilment is what more often than not comes in first, i.e. a demo, a presentation, etc... when it should be done pretty much last. By fulfilment I mean how one goes about addressing the problem. If the previous part of the process has been done properly, then the demo or presentation is exactly aligned to the prospect issues and context. If it's done right at the beginning of an engagement, then it's a one way information delivery usually finalised by "What do you think" to which the prospect might well answer: "This is interesting, let me think about it". #startofthechasingprocess 4- People buy from people. In longer sales process (i.e. not transactional), the relationship is important. But let's not forget that, last I checked, relationships don't pay the mortgage. So it's not about getting all friendly and cosy with the prospects, but truthful and gaining trust. I find that asking question is a great way to do so. Why? Because us human being love to talk about one thing: ourselves (well, at least I do :)  ). So, the more questions we ask, the more we understand about the person context and as a by product the more the person realise we are interested in him/her and the more he/she provides information. Also, I recommend to check DISC. It's a useful psychometric framework to understand how people function, which, in simplistic terms means if they like numbers, process, decisions, inter-personal relationship. Understanding the DISC profile of a prospect helps to adapt how to lead the process. 5- Questioning is an art. Voltaire famously said: "Do not judge a person by the answers he gives but rather by the questions he asks". Whether this is apocryphal or not, there is a lot of truth in it. In a sales context, I have learned that people ask a lot of questions. An untrained sales person will answer, ever so happy to display some sort of knowledge. The art in selling is actually to really understand the questions asked. Questions asked and questions meant are not the same. Drilling in the question by questioning is amazingly useful. A general framework of asking powerful questions is to do what is called reversing, which, in short is acknowledging it is a good question, rephrasing (we human like to hear what we just said) and asking to qualify why this question now, what exactly is meant, etc... Apologies, this was rather long and barely start to scratch the surface. But I hope it helps. Finally, I am not sure it is in line with the Quora guidelines but, if you are after "tips", there are some posts I write on the fascinating subject of sales here: http://rightsideofthependulum.com PS: Apologies if it is against guidelines!

Spend more time on the client than on the product. (Rapport). One that I liked was to look at your product and ask "Why should they buy this product from me?" "Why is this product worth it?" "Why is it better?" And you continue on like this, in this way once you understand the brilliance of what you are selling your sales will go up, in essence you have thought about all the objections that a client can come up with by simply doing an analysis of your product. What are ten reasons they should by this product now and from you?