Anyone can start a career as a sales representative, but whether or not they will survive will depend on how good they are in the art of selling. Getting into a sales job may be easy, but staying in the job is an entirely different ball game. It takes several years of experience to get it right and journey your way to becoming a great salesperson. If you are aiming for a successful career in sales, here are some of the key characteristics of a great salesperson that you need to acquire.
Confidence: Before you sell the product or service, you need to be able to sell yourself. The customer will look at you first before they look at the product. And as we know, first impression is often the last impression. To build confidence, you need to have pride in what you are doing and believe that it’s a value-add to someone. You need to have detailed information about the product you are selling and how it can benefit the customer.
Affable: A great salesperson comes across as a sociable individual and it’s a pleasure to talk to them. By being affable, it becomes easier to strike an instant rapport with the customer. Being affable also helps build trust and confidence among customers, which increases the probability of a win.
Empathy: A great salesperson is one who can take time to think about the needs of the customer. By understanding the customer’s perspective, it becomes easier to share with them the specific details about the product that might interest them.
Resilience: The thing about a great salesperson is that they don’t let rejections dent their spirit of selling. Some level of disappointment is natural, but a great salesperson has the ability to quickly rise above the negativities and start afresh.
Discipline: To become a top salesman, you will have to be disciplined in your approach. For example, you have to meticulously follow your leads and ensure that all calls and communications are done without delay. You also need to be thorough when communicating work details with other members in the sales team.
Flexibility: Most sales jobs involve meeting hundreds of individuals, each with their own varying personalities and specific tastes and preferences. A great salesperson is flexible in their approach and can make adjustments quickly to suit customer’s requirements. They can also adapt quickly to new sales strategies, new products, selling in a new geography, etc.
Ambitious: A great salesperson continues to strive for achieving newer milestones. They may have won the company’s salesperson of the year award, but things like these do not make them complacent. They continue to work hard to expand their network and achieve even bigger sales targets. In a way, a great salesperson has an insatiable appetite for achieving new goals and objectives.
Whether you like it or not, sales makes the world go 'round. The good news is that you don’t have to be a natural-born salesperson to succeed in the world of sales. In fact, as long as you have other people’s best interests at heart (with an eye for growing your business), you already have the makings of a great salesperson.
Sales isn’t about picking up the phone and harassing uninterested people. Great salespeople are trying to build a business. They look at sales not as something they do to people, but as a collaborative process between themselves and the client. Good sales skills can mean more money in your pocket and a better customer experience.
Five Qualities Good Salespeople Should Have
Whether you’re trying to boost your own skills or hire great salespeople for your team, I recommend looking for these characteristics. You can hone your sales skills by cultivating these five qualities.
PROMOTED
1. They’re Competitive
Salespeople don’t typically want to show up to work, stare at their computer for eight hours, and then go home. They live and breathe selling; it’s almost like a high. They’re often energized by the idea of outdoing themselves, their fellow salespeople and their competitors.
This doesn’t mean you’re looking down on others or being hard on yourself. If anything, sales is actually about pushing yourself to be better. How can you improve your close rate? How can you get more leads? What can you do to help prospects see you as an authority?
Good salespeople seek out chances to improve because that’s what makes them better. This usually means more commissions and more money in your pocket, too.
2. They Listen
When you think about “sales,” you might picture a slick-haired, smooth-talking car salesman. He won’t take no for an answer, and he’s just running his mouth without listening to the customer.
Actually, this stereotype is for bad salespeople. Good salespeople shouldn't treat client calls as a chance to pontificate; they should treat them as equitable conversations. You should still lead the call, but you need to give the customer time to respond.
When you listen to the customer’s goals and pain points, you can better align their needs with your company’s offering. That means the call should be more relevant to the customer and more solution-focused. I've found that if you can make that happen, you stand a better chance of closing the deal .
3. They’re Resilient
Sales can be a tough gig. One month you might be riding high on a wave of closings and commissions. The next, no one returns your phone calls and you experience a dry spell.
The best salespeople are resilient. They don’t love rejection (who does?), but they can accept hearing no a million times without despairing. Let rejection and failure motivate you. Rather than seeing failure as a character flaw, use it as fuel.
4. They’re Confident
Confidence is the currency of sales. A good salesperson comes off as confident, in control and informative — even if, deep down they are filled with insecurity.
It’s all about how you present yourself to prospects. Does your voice tremble when you talk, or is it engaging and bright? Even if you don’t feel confident, presenting yourself that way will bring trust and security to your pitch.
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:
- • Certainly.
- • Definitely.
- • Absolutely.
What matters is that you’re comfortable enough in your own skin to appear confident, which can make prospects feel more comfortable closing the deal.
5. They’re Honest
Sales is not about tricking people into buying a subpar product. That’s not only dishonest and wrong, but it’s also just bad business. I have always hated expressions like “She can sell water to a whale!” People often mean this as a compliment, but to a true salesperson, it can be quite the opposite. Why? 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. It’s easy to get carried away and promise people the world right now, but if your team can’t deliver, it’s only going to make customers angry.
After all, referrals are valuable in the world of sales. You don’t want to anger your customers — they have the potential to refer even more customers to you in the future, which makes your job easier. When in doubt, be honest and upfront from the start.
The Bottom Line
You don’t have to be a natural-born salesperson to be good at sales. Cultivate these five qualities to boost your sales skills. But remember, this isn’t something that happens overnight. Practice and grow your sales skills over time. Hone them like you would any other skill, and you could see increased sales, happier customers and a thriving business.
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