Every salesperson has their own secrets and techniques, but what common qualities do the top sales reps in the world share?
Sales may not be an exact science, but there are four things that most great sales reps have, which is why increasing the effectiveness of your sales team relies on finding individuals with the following qualities:
1. The Ability to Empathize
In popular culture, salespeople are often presented as pushy, demanding, and fake, willing to sacrifice all questions of propriety and good manners in order to close a deal. But while this kind of caricature plays well on the big screen, no sales rep will get far in the business with that kind of behavior.
Customers want to feel that their needs are understood, and a good salesperson earns their client’s trust through empathizing with them. Remember, sales reps really do provide a service by introducing customers to goods or services they need, and the best sales reps channel their empathy for the customer’s needs in order to close a sale that is satisfactory for both parties.
2. A Sense of Ambition
Unlike workers in most conventional jobs, most salespeople make their money from commissions. This can be tiring, which is why some salespeople simply set a realistic target and try to hit it consistently.
But the best salespeople are fired by the ambition to always better their most recent success, which drives them to work harder for each sale. This, in turn, helps them develop their skills and master new sales techniques, making them more valuable to their firm and more competent in their work.
3. A Good Support System
No salesperson operates in a vacuum, and success in sales relies on a lot more than one person’s drive, dedication, and personal skills. Behind every great sales rep are a host of tools that help them do their work as efficiently as possible. Probably the most essential of these tools is a good sales engagement platform. Sales engagement platforms help reps prioritize the most important leads, and through functions like queue-based lead routing they can ensure that sales reps always have the best lead in front of them. This saves reps a lot of time and lets them focus on cultivating the leads and closing the sales.
If you want to know more about how sales engagement platforms work, you can click here to explore the latest sales engagement software and learn how it can set sales reps up for success.
4. Tenacity
At the end of the day, what really separates the most successful sales reps from everyone else is tenacity: the will to stick with things even when they’re difficult.
It’s natural to get discouraged when call after the call ends in a brusque response or an automatic hang-up, but the great sales reps are the ones who treat each new lead with the care and sensitivity that they treated their first sale.
For driven individuals who like working with people, sales are one of the most difficult and rewarding careers available — a calling it can take years to master, and which can always surprise you. Find a team of salespeople who have the right mix of empathy, ambition, and tenacity, and then support them with the best sales software in the business, and success is all but guaranteed.
