Shining a light on a whole new set of cognitive skills needed by sales professionals
Cognitive Skills in Sales for Anticipatory Thinking
Cognitive Skills for Sales Professionals
The word ‘Cognitive’ is defined to mean “being, or involving conscious intellectual activity” This covers activities like thinking, reasoning, or remembering. So, cognitive skills are a set of mental abilities. They are brain-based skills required for everything we do in a day, from simple routine tasks to complex work. With waves of technology and artificial intelligence transforming every profession, the sales function has become more cerebral and demanding than ever before. Specific and higher-level cognitive skills are needed to be successful in sales of the future
Why should sales professionals build their repertoire of Cognitive Skills?
Sales as we have known it is changing dramatically. The common perception that sales is mostly about relationships, people, a little knowledge and great communication may not be valid any longer. The role of the salesperson is undergoing radical changes:
Sales professionals now need to be increasingly capable of:
- Sharper and better thinking
- Offering insights and not just information to Customers
- Becoming reliable advisers who can help Customers anticipate and make informed choices better
- Understanding, using, communicating, and interpreting data
- Solving problems, analysing issues, visualizing & anticipating possibilities, discussing insights, using logic and emotions together to build and communicate value
10 Essential Cognitive Skills for Sales
While research enumerates 22 cognitive skills for becoming future ready, 10 of them are essential skills that sales professionals would benefit by mastering on priority. Below is a listing:
I Analysis oriented skills – (1) Data Orientation & Data Affinity (2) Analytical thinking for innovation (3) Ability to identify opportunities
II Action oriented skills – (4) Organizing Knowledge (5) Problem Solving (6) Bias for action and execution (7) Technology use, monitoring and control
III Mindset oriented skills – (8) Digital Intelligence (9) Passion driven curiosity (10) Globalised Thinking
These skills can be eminently learnable. We need to keep our focus on What they are, How they make a difference, How to learn them in a good way, How to use them, How to make them part of us in a more effective way. The Sept 2024 issue of Mercuri Mail turned the spotlight on 3 of these skills viz., Passion Driven Curiosity, Ability to Identify Opportunities and Data Affinity and Data Orientation. This issue highlights 3 more of them – (1) Problem Solving (2) Digital Intelligence and (3) Analytical Thinking for Innovation
Year 2026 demands that we adopt Anticipatory Thinking which is the ability to foresee future problems, opportunities, risks, mitigants and outcomes. While bots and AI agents can make suggestions to buyers based on pattern spotting algorithms, it will always take a seasoned sales professional to add genuine value by supporting Customers in making choices that best suit their needs. Sales professionals with superior cognitive skills can anticipate multiple scenarios, spot the invisible pain points and uncover opportunities that Customers may not themselves recognise
Cognitive skills can foster anticipatory thinking not only in crafting a value based approach to Customers and markets but also equip salespeople to become way more effective in prospecting, pitching, negotiation and closing deals
"If you anticipate the coming of troubles, you take away their power when they arrive."
— Seneca
Welcome to the 'New Mercuri Mail'.. The India Journal of Mercuri International!
This is the 'Go To Place Sales Newsletter and Journal' of the discerning Sales Community! Continuing its 35 year long tradition of sharing knowledge curated from the best of sales and management literature, here come interesting new features, all with an unwavering focus on making a difference!
Happy reading and reflecting!
Team Mercuri India
