Everyone involved in developing and managing a sales team has asked themselves the nature or nurture question: are top sales professionals made or born? Do we need to recruit for innate qualities or can we cultivate the right skills and provide the right tools to build a first-class team? Based on my experience, the answer lies somewhere in the middle: someone with the right personality and spirit certainly has a head start, and everyone’s effectiveness can be enhanced by training, tools, and structure.
Either way, here are six traits that I’ve consistently seen in top-performing sales organizations across industries and markets.
Honesty Resilience
The coffee mug of a great sales VP I had the good fortune of working with early in my career said, “Salesmanship begins when the customer says no!” No matter what the product or market, salespeople are likely to hear “No” more often (maybe a lot more often) than they hear “Yes.” There’s two lessons here: 1) It’s OK. You win some and you lose some. If you’re going to be brought down by the inevitable rejections, sales may not be the ideal profession for you. 2) “No” does not always mean “end of story.” Embracing this truth and developing the fortitude and skill to better understand what led to the initial rejection often leads to turning the situation around. Have you been talking to the right influencers in the customer’s organization? Do you really understand the pains motivating their buying decision and the quantifiable benefits your solution can deliver? Have you communicated this in a compelling way to the right audience? Best case, you can turn the No into a Yes. Worst case, you’ll learn valuable lessons for the next opportunity.
Suggested Read: Too Many Sales Tools? Here’s How to Find the One That’s Right For You.
Honesty
Be honest, first of all with yourself, and most definitely with your customers, about the types of problems your products can solve, for whom, and the value they can create.
With yourself: This is especially important for you during the qualification phase of the sale. How many times have we all allowed ourselves to be convinced that we have a good fit by rapport with a customer contact and an apparently good solution for some needs – only to have other influencers with other needs show us we never had a shot? Unless we are very clear-eyed and honest first of all with ourselves, we can kid ourselves into wasting a lot of time, money and effort chasing bad deals.
With customers: the last thing we want to do is create an inflated impression in our customers’ minds about what we can really deliver. This can be tempting in the short run, because it might help win a few deals. But it inevitably catches up – sometimes during the more detailed “proof” phases of the sales process, and sometimes after the sale in the form of unhappy customers who share their feelings with their peers. Honesty throughout the process builds trust, solid customer relationships, and positive references and referrals.
Bottom line: know your market, your products, and the value they do, and don’t, deliver to buyers in that market. Find prospects for whom that value is compelling, and focus your efforts there.
