I realise that in writing this I may touch a nerve or two and I acknowledge that there are many successful salespeople, and they are not all the same.
I suppose it depends on how you define success and how you define greatness.
You might define success purely on the sales revenue number. You might define success as the number of calls made. You might define success on how long the salesperson has been selling or you might just define success on whether the salesperson is a nice person, and how much their customers like them. Maybe a combination of the above.
And while these might be some attributes of a great salesperson, I do believe there are some more substantial attributes.
As a salesperson myself, working with sales teams for many years, training and coaching salespeople and seeing many salespeople grow from good to great, there are the same fundamental attributes that I believe great salespeople share.
1 - Empathic – They understand how important empathy is in creating trust and building a relationship. They know how to use customer-centric questioning to understand more about the customer's world, making them more comfortable in opening up.
2 - Customer Centric – They understand that the customer is the reason their role exists. They are advocates of their business in front of the customer and advocates of the customer's business inside the company they represent. They follow the customer not the sale, knowing that done well the sales always come.
3 - Disciplined – They understand that building relationships is a dance and a journey. That it is many interactions with purpose to build the trust that results in win/win outcomes. They know that this takes discipline to stay the course and not give up, to keep positive tension in the sales process until the goal has been achieved. They also have the discipline to keep engaging with the customer to reinforce the trust.
4 - Belief – They believe in themselves and the company they work for. They understand and believe in the customer promise their company stands by and are able to pass this belief on to their customers. This belief enables them to handle objections effectively.
5 - Solution and Value Centric – They understand that selling is about providing solutions and the value these solutions give the customer. They understand that the product they sell is only a small part of the overall solution. That it is everything that sits around the product that makes the difference. They understand that price is not the key determinant for people to buy. Unless of course, the customer doesn’t see the value.
Revenue, profit, and quality of calls are an outcome of the above attributes. They are an indicator of how well a salesperson develops the above skills and attributes. The good thing is that all of these things can be learned, developed, and improved upon. Like many things in life, the path to being great is a journey, not a destination.




