The core of a successful career in sales is being confident in one's abilities as well as truly believing that what they're offering is the single best solution to the client's problems. Customers recognize confidence and tend to mirror it, which enables them to trust their salesperson and make the purchase. This allows a person to form a plan of action determined by feeling out the client's hesitations and pain points and approaching them in a way that speaks to them in their current situation.
A salesperson must be able to identify the client's needs to take the right angle in selling to him or her. Empathy provides valuable insight and feedback from the client and allows the salesperson to establish a comfortable working relationship and earn the trust of the client, making the client more likely to buy. Remaining excited about the prospect of making their next sale is a true mark of a successful salesperson's personality.
They're always motivated and are constantly looking for the next sales opportunity. Focused individuals are driven to meet goals, demanding more of themselves and pushing themselves to do what needs to be done to exceed their goals.
Paired with empathy, a great salesperson who listens can identify with the prospective client while staying focused on the goals they've set and presenting solutions that are right for the customer.
The most successful salespeople in the long-term make honest deals. They're focused on providing solutions to their clients, and they know that if they're dishonest, the relationship will fall apart and future sales will disappear with it. They also understand word of mouth, so they're not eager to compromise their entire client base to make one deal. Self-motivation and a strong sense of independence make salespeople excel at working on their own clients.
Companies are more likely to prefer independence in a candidate for a sales job because it requires less time walking them through every step of the day. A good salesperson comes off as confident, in control and informative — even if, deep down they are filled with insecurity. Does your voice tremble when you talk, or is it engaging and bright?
While your tone and body language matter, your choice of words can also have a huge impact on your message. As Hubspot notes , you should use confident verbiage such as:. Sales is not about tricking people into buying a subpar product. Because water is the last thing that a whale needs. Good salespeople should be honest from the start and should only want to sell you something that you need for your personal and professional success.
And yes, that means being honest — even if being honest means losing a sale. Be honest with the customer about what the company can truly provide. Can you really meet their metrics? Be realistic. After all, referrals are valuable in the world of sales. He has since become the new branch sales manager, a more appropriate use of his considerable abilities. One of the older men, though rated an adequate B salesman, was evaluated as an A office manager. He had good empathy, but not the strongest ego drive, which was why he was a B rather than an A salesman.
But on the managerial side, he had the ability to handle details, relatively rare for a salesperson; he was able to delegate authority and make decisions fairly rapidly and well. These qualities, plus his good empathy, gave him excellent potential as a manager, but not as sales manager, for his only moderate drive would have hurt him in the latter position.
As office administrative manager, the position he was moved up into, he has performed solidly. The former office administrative manager, a man well able to handle details reliably and responsibly, but with little empathy and thus unable to deal understandingly with his office staff , was moved laterally into the accounting department, an area in which he had had some previous experience, and where he could carefully deal with and manage details rather than people.
Each present employee, as well as each new applicant, should be placed in the area where he can be most creative and productive. Each one will need training.
Companies have spent very large sums of money in developing effective training programs. When they are working with a man with potential, these training programs can and do bring out this potential and develop an excellent salesman.
Without sound training, even A-level salesmen are seriously limited. Yet how often have men gone through long and expensive training programs only to fail totally when put out into the field?
When this happens, the trainer, and perhaps the training program itself, is blamed and sometimes even discarded. The most skilled diamond polisher, given a piece of coal, can only succeed in creating a highly polished piece of coal; but given the roughest type of uncut diamond, he can indeed turn it into the most precious stone.
Here is a case in point: About three years ago, a company in the Northeast installed an especially fine training program, in which a great deal of money was invested. At the end of two years, the results of this program were appraised. It was found that sales had not increased beyond what might normally be expected in that industry during that period of time.
The investment in the training program seemed to have been a total waste. The entire training program was therefore dropped.
Six months later, we were asked by management to test and evaluate the present sales force and to try to determine why the training program, so highly recommended, had failed so badly. The reason was immediately apparent. Out of a sales force of 18 men, there was only one rating A, and his sales actually had improved after the training program. Two others were B-level salesmen, and they too had improved to some extent with training.
They simply did not have the potential of good salespeople. They were rigid, opinionated, and for the most part seriously lacking in empathy. This type of man rarely responds to training, no matter how thoroughgoing the program. The role of training is clear. It is vital. Efficiency in training, using the best of modern methods, is necessary to do this. But training can succeed only if selection succeeds. Good raw silk must be provided first, before the training department can be expected to produce the silk purses.
Just as few manufacturers would allow their products to be produced on the basis of rough estimates of size and weight, but would demand scientific control of these basic characteristics, so too must the process of selection be made more scientific and accurate.
The role of the salesman is so vital to the success of a company that it is amazing to these writers how little stress industry has placed on selecting the best raw material. To sell effectively in the U. To sell effectively in the foreign market, crossing cultural lines, requires even more empathy. And marketing goods and services anywhere calls for a great deal of ego drive. The U. Department of Commerce recently stated that American industry has no problem with its production.
Its main problem is distribution. Effective salesmen are the key to distribution, and proper selection is the key to finding, using, and profiting from salesmen of good quality. Industry must improve its ability to select top salesmen. Failure to date has stemmed from such errors as the belief that interest equals aptitude; the fakability of aptitude tests; the crippling emphasis on conformity rather than creativity; and the subdivision of a man into piecemeal traits, rather than understanding him as a whole person.
Training can only succeed when the raw material is present. Selecting men with empathy and ego drive should contribute in some degree to helping industry meet one of its most pressing problems: reducing the high cost of turnover and selecting genuinely better salesmen. You have 1 free article s left this month. You are reading your last free article for this month. Better to miss out on a deal and maintain your honesty, integrity and network.
They don't get distracted by instant messenger or email, and they aren't worried about office gossip. They understand what they need to do to be successful and set goals for themselves to achieve that success. They act with purpose in their day-to-day and apply deep focus to all aspects of their work. While grounded in reality, they focus on what they can control, stay on course with optimism about what they can achieve, and [don't] let the rest drag them down.
Additionally, in many markets around the world, business is based on relationships , which takes longer to develop when working with international customers. Paula Fernandes and Brittney Morgan Helmrich contributed to the reporting and writing in this article. Some source interviews were conducted for a previous version of this article. Max Freedman. If you want to succeed at selling, it's important to emulate the traits of those who came before you. These are some of the most important traits that successful salespeople share.
Each of these types can be broken down into a cluster of descriptions to paint a picture of the person: Assertive: goal-oriented, competitive, decisive, impatient, controlling, loud; more likely to speak in sentences than in questions Amiable: patient, friendly, open to challenges, calm, informal; often good listeners who ask many questions and seek strong personal relationships Expressive: people-pleasing, convicted, colorful, persuasive, outgoing, creative, spontaneous, intuitive, loyal, enthusiastic; also likely to speak in sentences instead of questions and seek strong personal relationships Analytic: impersonal, fact-driven, formal, serious, direct, patient, prepared; likely to ask many questions and not seek personal sales relationships According to the business leaders Business News Daily interviewed, good salespeople often boast several qualities from all four sales personality types.
How to sell to each of the personality types Sales personality types aren't just important for knowing whether you'd make a good salesperson — you'll also want to change your selling methods based on the personality type of the person to whom you're selling. Experts suggest taking the following approaches when selling to the different personality types: Assertive Be professional. Come prepared.
Only give entirely accurate answers. If you don't have one, tell the person that you'll investigate it and get back to them. Make short statements and get to the point quickly. Provide examples of your product's benefits. Show how your product levels the person with their competitors. Use business metrics rather than subjective descriptions. Amiable Pitch a vision, not a product. Build rapport before beginning your sales pitch.
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