10 qualities of a good sales person

What is a good salesperson?

A good salesperson is not necessarily the best earner in the business. They will be among the top, but we have to look at the overall criteria. I normally use a formula based around key performance indicators to first realise who the good sales people are, weighting them across these KPIs. Once we have formed our list, we then look at the reasoning behind each metric as to why they are doing well.

A good example of this comes from one KPI, which is conversion statistics. On the face of it the best converters are good at closing, once you delve deeper you realise that by building good rapport, by asking the right questions, by objection handling and by closing that is why there conversions are great.

So let’s look at the top 10 qualities of a good salesperson.

• Attitude
• Product Knowledge
• Rapport Building
• Listening Skills
• Asking Questions
• Problem Solving
• Objection Handling
• Closing
• Thick Skin
• Openness to learning

Let’s look at the fundamental qualities of a good salesperson

Attitude is quite possibly the most important quality of a good salesperson. This will make or break you during your career and becomes easier with experience. Having a ‘can do’ attitude will help you and your customers. This is a trait of autonomous sales people who want to succeed in their career. Having a limited mindset will hinder you in your career. Be positive, make things happen.

Product Knowledge, I cannot speak more highly on this subject. When you take on a new role, you should learn your product inside out. You need to know your product as a customer will lose faith in you if you cannot answer their questions or objections. Learn to sell the product to yourself, and how you would pitch it to a potential customer.

Rapport Building is another important quality of a good salesperson, ‘as people like people they are like’. Without rapport you will have an uphill battle to sell your product. I’m not talking about asking pointless questions to the customer like ‘how is the weather?’, I’m talking about using their name, using empathy, asking the right questions about their business. That is real rapport, not the manufactured time wasting questions I hear.

Listening skills are great, when you realise that listening is more important than speaking. When combined with asking open questions around a prospects business, listening is really important. Let the prospect speak, they are taking time out of their day to speak with you. When asking open questions, listen to what prospect is saying and then probe more, they are telling you about their want or need.

Other qualities of good salesperson

Asking questions is a skill in sales. Anyone can ask questions, but learning what the right questions are is an art form. Again you need to know your product, but also you need to know what your prospects business is. If you have done your research before hand then you can ask questions to relate to their want or need and how your product will help them.

Problem Solving is a an interesting topic of discussion. Customers will often come to you and give you a problem to deal with. There are two ways of dealing with this, agree that you cannot help or you can look for a way in order to solve the problem. This could be something as simple as they are not keen on the colour of your product, to that they cannot purchase the product with one payment. It is up to you to look for the opportunity to help them make this work.

Objection Handling is a widely talked about subject, unfortunately I do not think there are many people who deal with objections as well as they could do. I think that objections could be dealt with better. Just because a customer has put up an objection, does not mean that they will not go for it. It might be a bad time, it might be that they do not understand what the product is.

As sales people we need to ask the questions, give an appropriate response and then ask for the business. This could happen a number of times in one conversation. Learn from objections that come and how to deal with them, go and listen to the best objection handler you know, they could help you.

Additional qualities of good salespeople

Closing is a fine art in the fact, it needs to be executed well. It is very straight forward as a process, you ask if the customer wants to go ahead. If they don’t want to, then time to find out why and objection handle to see if there is a possibility. Ask the question, wait for the response, and then act accordingly. Trust me this will serve you well.

Thick skin, I appreciate it is a crude term, but you cannot take things personally. You may speak with someone rude, you may speak with someone who is having a bad day. They don’t know you, it is not personal.

Openness to learning, may be a strange that I have added here, but I meet a lot of sales people who are not willing to try new approaches, and if you are successful that is fine, you carry on. I have always scratched my head when under performers refuse to change though. When you try something new, it makes you uncomfortable, and when it works it motivates you more. We need to progress and develop as sales and customers evolve.

Conclusion

So there we have it, 10 qualities of a good salesperson. I appreciate that some of these points may be a curve ball, but this is how I see things when I work and coach with salespeople. There are many styles and attitudes, but everyone can be a top performer, they have to make some changes and focus on parts of their approach. Sales is easy when you know how, just enjoy the journey in developing your skills.

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