Successful sales people display the same characteristics in my experience, but those characteristics aren’t the ones most people would expect. They don’t include ambitious, aggressive, gregarious, social, pushy, or any of another 20 we might think of.
But they do include the qualities we would look for when wanting to buy from somebody! That shouldn’t be a surprise, but it will be to some!
In 30 years of sales and sales management, every successful sales person I’ve worked with has combined four characteristics, usually in these proportions:
- 30% Honesty
- 30% Efficiency
- 30% Empathy
- 10% Luck
Successful sales people tell customers the truth, do what they say they’ll do when they say they’ll do it, and understand what it’s like being a customer. And of course all successful sales people get more than their fair share of luck – probably because they make it.
Honesty
This should be easy to understand. Customers are smart, suspicious of sales people, and have lots of reference resource. If, despite all that, they are misled into buying the wrong deal they won’t forgive or forget. Sales people who abuse customers don’t get away with it for long.
Efficiency
Ultimately it’s all about assured delivery – of what the customer thought she was buying and at the price, quality, on time with the service. We can only persuade the customer we’re capable of that assured delivery if we do everything we say we’ll do, on time.
Empathy
Not sympathy. Customers rarely want that. But they do want to buy from sales guys who understand the problems of deciding to buy, choosing who to buy from and from that point being totally dependent. Buying is challenging and risky. It helps the world go around when customers feel some empathy from the seller.
Luck
Throughout life we all need a bit of luck here and there, just to get to the other end. Selling is the same. Every so often we need that extra something that, despite odds stacked against us, makes our honesty, efficiency and empathy shine through.
All the successful sales people I ever met displayed these same qualities.
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