A good salesperson has more to offer customers than an exciting pitch. Theye are enthusiastic with resilience and spend time to know their customers’ needs, show empathy, and deal in confidence. They know how to handle rejection, and learn from both from success and lost ones.
Every successful salespersons are having following characteristics
- Delightful: The first impression must be positive, this is important to establish a relationship. As a salesperson, you should have a well-put-together appearance and an inviting demeanour.
- Enthusiastic: Being a good salesperson means you’ll put in the work, even when it gets tough. Having motivation to get the job done shows that you are passionate.
- Analytical: Friendliness is a good trait, you have to let your customers know you are prepared, too. Customers want to make deals with salespeople who are dependable, fact-driven, and likely to ask questions and deliver answers clients are looking for.
- Resilient: Sales numbers can vary time-to-time, but that doesn’t deter a good salesperson. Instead of getting discouraged, you’ll rethink your game plan and get back to work.
- Attentive: Good salespeople understand that each customer has different needs. Actively listening to their pain points can help to create a deal that your prospective client will value.
- Thorough: A good salesperson should be an expert in what they’re selling. Demonstrating that you’re knowledgeable makes you more reputable in the eyes of customers.
- Empathic: Connecting to your customers’ emotions can tell you what they really want from a sale. By appealing to their sentiments, you can meet their needs in new ways.
- Confident: Being confident in your product or service can make your customers feel more confident in it. The same can be said for how confident you are in yourself.
- Adaptable: Sales is a pretty volatile profession, and good salespeople are adaptable to those changes. Being able to pivot your approach, or manage time shifts are very useful skills in this field.
- Committed: Sales, it’s always a tough profession, but those who are hungry to succeed will strive toward their goals.
Now the question is how to become a Good Salesperson
1. Identify and stick to your buyer personas: A clearly defined buyer persona is crucial to an effective sales process. And a salesperson who sticks to that persona is effective in generating sales. They research the prospect to make sure they are a good fit. They stick to their ideal buyer persona and know exactly whom they are selling to and why.
2. Use a measurable, repeatable sales process: High-performing salespersons use a process that’s optimized to move as many prospects as possible from “connect” to “close.” They know the state of every deal in their pipeline, what actions they’ll take next, and when. At the same, it is very important for salespersons to review key metrics and adjust as necessary.
3. Know your product: Being able to sell is half the battle. Understanding what you’re selling is the rest. Nowadays that prospects have more access to information than ever before, they’re not fooled so easily. To gain their trust and add value to their lives, you have to truly know your product and why it’s valuable to your prospect.
4. Review your pipeline objectively: Effective salesperson doesn’t mark a deal as “likely to close” because the influencer likes them. They’re able to objectively review opportunities, avoid happy ears, and come up with accurate sales forecasts.
5. Find shortcuts and hacks: If a salesperson finds a strategy or technique that works, they use it repeatedly until it stops working. Reps are always working against the clock, which means the more time they spend experimenting, the less time they have for selling. Plus, there’s an opportunity cost. Try one thing that doesn’t work, and you’ve missed the opportunity to use something that does.
6. Practice active listening: Successful salespeople are completely present when they are with prospects. They’re not thinking about another deal, scrolling through mobile. They’re engaged – as a result, their conversations with buyers are deeper and more meaningful. Active listening may be one of the hardest skills to develop, as everyone cares more about what you have to say. However, it’s incredibly valuable. You will build stronger relationships & will unlock information that will help position your product as the best option.
7. Work hard: It’s 5 p.m. on the last day of the month or quarter. The B players have already left the office – they’re celebrating because they all met the quota. The C players are still in the office – they’re sending off last-ditch email attempts to prospects they haven’t engaged with them in weeks. The A players are in the office, too. They’ve already hit, but they’re still sending emails, scheduling meetings, and making calls. By laying the foundation for next month they always blow their goals out of the water.
8. Follow up: Many salespeople fail to effectively follow up after sending a proposal. They don’t even know if the prospect checked their proposal.
9. Personalize your message: Instead of following a script and approaching each prospect with a “one-size-fits-all” mentality, high-performing salespeople are committed to learning about a prospect to tailor their message. These salespersons understand the unique pain points their prospect is facing and can explain why their product is a good fit.
10. Shadow your peers: Want to improve your objection handling? Identify the salesperson who’s best at it within your company and ask if you can shadow a few of their calls. Learning from your peers is a great way to get better at your job while building strong relationships with your coworkers.
11. Practice your people skills: Excellent small talk is a learned skill – and one that’s crucial to success. Whether you’re at a housewarming party or a networking event, practice making other people feel at ease. Notice what makes them open up, zone out, and laugh, and take what you learn back to the office.
12. Be a team player: The best salespeople know it takes a village to build a career and a successful sales team. Help your colleagues, and know when to ask for help – that’s the key to a long, fulfilling sales career.
13. Know when to walk away: Know how much your average deal length is and use that as a guidepost for how long is too long to spend on one deal. There are expections to this rule, but if your average sales cycle is 45 days and you are working a deal going on 90, consider trying Sandler’s Reverse Negative approach.
14. Be honest: The days of telling customers anything to close are over. Don’t promise a feature that doesn’t exist, a price you can’t deliver on, or a service your company can’t do well. This might earn you a close, but it won’t keep their business, and you will end up with bad reviews. New research shows honesty can actually help you lead a happier life
15. Always solve for the customer: Don’t oversell your customer on services or features they don’t need, just to bump up your number. A consultative selling approach allows you to be honest with your customer about what they really need. It’s the right thing to do and you might be surprised how much it will benefit you when it comes to renewals and referrals.
16. Roll with rejection: You won’t win every deal, and some buyers just won’t like you. That’s part of being in sales. And while it’s important to be thoughtful about how you can improve, it’s crucial to move on easily from rejection. Expert’s suggest viewing rejection as proof you are pushing the limits. So, examine why you were not successful with your prospect and move forward.
17. Always ask for referrals: Salespeople know the easiest close often comes from a referral. Sales pro, Marc Wayshack, recommends asking for one introduction every day. The social proof is already there, initial outreach is direct, and sales cycles are often shorter. Once you’ve successfully closed, always ask for a referral and follow up quickly on those leads.
18. Stay balanced: Salespeople experience more highs and lows in a single week than most professionals do in an entire month. Some days, you feel invincible. Other days, you wonder if you even belong in sales.
Successful reps have learned to manage their emotions and stay somewhere in the middle. When things are going really well and almost all of their deals are closing, they remind themselves not to get too cocky. When business dies down, they tell themselves not to become demoralized: sales will pick up soon if they keep chugging.
19. Take breaks: In sales, activity is often correlated with results. The more emails you send, the more meetings you book. The more meetings you book, the more demos you set. The more demos you set, the more deals you close.
Many salespeople end up working 10-hour days every weekday and even putting in time on the weekends. Not only is this bad for your mental and physical health, it’s also unproductive. Breaks are scientifically proven to boost memory, focus and the quality of your ideas.
20. Get eight or more hours of sleep: Think you can get away with five or six of sleep? Think again. According to the American of Sleep Medicine, most adults need seven to eight hours of sleep per night. To be at your best on sales calls, prioritize your sleep.
21. Believe in what you’re selling: It’s easier to be passionate about – and sell – a product when you genuinely believe in it. The most effective salespeople actually use their product and believe in its value.
If you feel “meh” about what you’re selling, find happy testimonials from customers. Examples of how your product has improved people’s lives – in ways both large and small – will reinforce your motivation (and give you valuable social proof when you’re meeting with prospects).
22. Identify your strongest motivator: It doesn’t matter what drives a salesperson – they simply need to be motivated. Every top salesperson has a burning reason for showing up to work every day and giving it their all. Maybe they want to buy a house and must make at least 110% of the quota every month. Maybe they’re super competitive and always want to be at the top of the leaderboard. Maybe they need to prove to themselves they can do well in sales. Ask yourself, “What’s my #1 reason for wanting to be successful?” If you can’t immediately come up with an answer, you need to find that motivator.
23. View your customer’s success as your own: Salespeople don’t stop working as soon as the prospect signs on the dotted line. Instead, top reps touch base frequently with their customers to seek feedback and provide tactical suggestions. Customer’s success lets reps know what strategies work, forms client relationships, and drives customer advocacy for your business.
24. Build personal relationships: Dan Tyre, one of the best salespeople I know, is a relationship builder. Tyre connects with people everywhere he goes – not in the surface-level, LinkedIn way, or the “let’s exchange business cards” way, but in a genuine, human way that makes you want to talk to him again. As a salesperson, relationships are your capital. You don’t need Don Draper levels of charisma; on the contrary, a desire to help goes a lot further than a magnetic personality.
25. They prepare ahead of time: An effective salesperson prepares before a call. That means they do research on their prospect and gather all the information they need before a big customer meeting. Top reps don’t wing it. They go in with a plan and a contingency plan. This way, they anticipate challenges or questions and prepare an effective response to avoid losing the sale.
26. Look for potential customers wherever you go: To over-perform, you can’t stop being a salesperson as soon as you leave the office. Successful reps are always looking for potential customers – at parties, networking events, dinners, and so on. Of course, you have to read the room. Should you deliver a five-minute speech about the importance of life insurance at your Cousin Jack’s memorial? Definitely not. But if you’re talking to your new friend Greta, and she mentions she’s in the market for life insurance, give her some handy pointers and let her know you’d be happy to talk more in depth.
Put these Habits into Practice to become a great salesperson. There’s not one single way to become a good salesperson, but the habits mentioned above are essential to providing a positive sales experience to your customers. Demonstrating that you have passion, knowledge, self-determination, and adaptability can take you from an average sales rep to a high performing success story.
