What Traits do you think of when describing a good sales person?  Typically they are personality traits: outgoing, thoughtful, positive, responsive, knowledgeable, etc.… Although personality traits are very important, there are six OTHER traits you or your employees should focus on to succeed in sales. 

1)  Take it personally!

When you take things personally, you hold yourself accountable.  By holding yourself accountable you:

• become the go-to person
• become the expert
• become more passionate about what you are selling; people will trust you and believe in you.

2)  Be resourceful!

No buyer wants to think that his or her dollar stops with you.  You need to represent your product, your company, and actually have all areas of your company backing you.  So many sales people act as if this is the case, and complain that it really isn't.  That can’t be you.  If you are going to succeed, you need to buck up, and make connections throughout all levels and silos of your organization; develop them as resources for your customer.  Hint...humility goes a long way

3)  Become a teacher!

If you are to succeed, you need to teach.  The more you know about your product or service, the better you can represent it to your prospective customers and to your prospective internal resources.  The more you know and share, the more people will follow you and support you.  Find creative ways to do this.  Ask to hold a meeting with different departments or individuals in your company, share what you know, ask for input on how you can collectively improve.  You will be surprised how little people know about the products they make and how little you know about what it really takes to support you.  This learning experience will educate all of you, and as a team, you will sell more.

4)  Analyze your failures!

When you take things personally, it’s difficult not to get upset when you don’t get the sale.  Don’t get upset, do the analysis, share it with your internal resources and move forward together.  No matter how good you think you are, you can always improve; this is one way of doing it.  Your ability to move forward and become better is all part of holding yourself accountable.

5)  Create growth!

Managing an account base is not enough, nor is prospecting for new customers.  The two must go hand in hand or growth will not happen.  True success of a sales person is to increase the number of customers and the total dollars earned from all customers current and new.  Know your product, your customers, your internal resources, your competitors, your target growth areas and your results.

6)  Track your results!

So many sales people track their success based upon their actions, not their results...Companies fail because of this and sales people lose their jobs without knowing what hit them.  Become results oriented, share your results internally and give credit to the entire team.

What other traits would you use to describe your best salesperson?  How would you describe yourself?

Written by Lisa Woods, President ManagingAmericans.com

Lisa is a successful entrepreneur, world-class marketing strategist, and dynamic business leader with more than 20 years experience leading, managing and driving growth. Throughout her career, Lisa has been influential in integration techniques, organizational and cultural overhauls, financial turnarounds and developing employees into exceptional leaders, results driven managers and passionate team contributors.

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