Successful sales reps often have indescribable and complex abilities that set them apart from their peers. These sales reps connect easily and build relationships with prospects. With pinpoint accuracy, they move opportunities through the pipeline and effortlessly close sales deal after sales deal.
What makes these sales reps so successful?
Great salespeople do the same thing every day. They are purpose driven. They focus on the success and happiness of their prospective and current clients. They are able to see the business world through the eyes of the other party. They are naturally curious and love serving their clients. Being a sales professional requires a special kind of mental toughness to ignore all of the times the word NO is spoken in pursuit of the wondrous YES.
- Successful sales reps know when to go for a deal and when to walk away (they qualify hard).
- Successful sales reps seek to truly understand their clients’ needs (use the knowledge to challenge their clients).
- Successful sales reps drive deals proactively (stay in control throughout the client’s buying process).
- Great salespeople know their biggest enemy is time wasted on the wrong things.
A Sales Approach for a Changing Business World
In today’s sales world, old approaches aren’t cutting it. Successful sales reps build the confidence it takes to offer influential insights to open up the right kind of conversations with their prospects and clients. Top sales reps do these five things:
- They hold themselves to a much higher standard. Top sales reps who consistently deliver outstanding results make high performance the de facto standard. They realize the “buck” stops with them. They know their actions alone determine their results and they do what is necessary to achieve their goals. They never blame internal problems, the economy, tough competitors, or other factors if they fail to meet their sales quotas. With extreme self-discipline they take it upon themselves as they self-manage to a higher standard as they fail to accept mediocrity.
- They continually prospect keeping their sales funnel full. Top sales reps divide their time between selling, prospecting and taking care of their clients. Top sales reps who crush their quotas are fully dedicated to prospecting and have modernized their prospecting approaches to align with the modern buyer. The primary differentiator of today’s successful sales reps is their ability to prospect.
- They never stop learning. Top sales reps are always reading sales books, learning new skills, asking for coaching, and improving their own selling abilities. They never sit back and rest on their laurels. They are constantly striving and pushing themselves to improve. This strong work ethic pays off and results in sharper selling skills and improved win rates straight across the board. The most successful sales reps are never content with their current abilities as they are constantly learning and pushing their limits.
- They are always helping. Legacy, old school, and analog minded sales reps are closers. The pitch starts the minute they open their mouth. The next gen, new school, digitally minded successful sales rep places the customer’s needs before their own. They develop trust with their prospects and clients. They leverage trust to gain a better understanding of their challenges, goals and problems. Top sales reps use their prospects and clients’ terminology to closely align themselves as to how they can help. If a top sales rep believes the prospect or their client has the wrong goals, they don’t hesitate to challenge them. They educate them as to why they may be wrong as they help their prospects and clients avoid potential business potholes or roadblocks.
- They have become digitally savvy sales professionals. In this highly networked business world, the internet along with Google has forever changed the sales process. In this modern buyer-driven society, sales reps must step up their sales game. They need to be viewed by their prospects and clients as trusted advisors. Top sales reps make the investment and commit to obtain this status. Successful sales reps commit the time to build up their online authority and presence. They read blog posts their targeted prospects read and they drive conversation around them. They follow them on Twitter and connect with them on LinkedIn. They retweet their best messages and comment on their posted content. They join the same LinkedIn groups their prospects are involved with and answer relative questions. They take the time to write their own blog posts around the top questions they receive during prospect and client meetings. They become digital thought leaders and subject matter experts. They soon realize educational and relevant content drives online conversation which ultimately turns into offline meetings.
Why Most Sales Reps Fall Back into Complacency
Sales reps must invest their time and have enough patience to reach this level of authority with their prospects and clients. They must remove the “I have no time” excuse and learn to have patience.
We must be patient in managing our own business expectations. Let’s face it, selling can be tough. Patience helps us all remember what we do as sales reps is difficult and the relationships essential to success are not created overnight. Great sales reps are tough and demanding on themselves.
It is unfortunate as most sales reps have hypnotized themselves into believing what they aren’t doing doesn’t work. Think about it for a second.
Complacency, it is a ruthless disease. It cares only of the weak and timid or the wait-and-see-what-happens. The hard reality behind this is while most sales reps operate with hints of contentedness, top sales reps inside your marketplace do not. With extreme precision they have rewritten the playbook adapting to the changes inside the buyer’s world.
And so the sales story continues. This is why most sales reps will shoot themselves with complacency bullets. Have you ever seen a sales monkey with a loaded gun?
