There was a time when the commercial world (sales) was my great passion. My first job was as a salesman (a sales rep), and before I turned 24 I had the honour and pleasure of training large sales teams.
Most people probably think you need a special gift or talent to sell, and it may be that some people already have certain attitudes that make it easier for them to become what we call a successful salesperson. But when it comes to talent… talent isn’t everything (read: Talent: are you born with it or is it made?).
In fact, the habits that successful salespeople tend to have are one thing, and the sales techniques you can teach them are quite another. When I was training new salespeople to join the company, before I even started, I already knew, with a minimal margin of error, who would make a good salesperson and who wouldn’t.
All you had to do was watch their behaviour, their body language, how closely they listened to you and, above all, their humility as a person. In the end I came to the conclusion that the habits you need to be a good salesperson aren’t very different from the ones you need to be a good investor, a good businessperson, or even a good seducer. In the same way, the mistakes and bad habits of the other salespeople were the very ones that would make a person “unfit” for investing, unfit for starting a business and unfit for many other things.
Not everyone can become the number one salesperson, but we can all look at what the leading salespeople do and improve our own habits, because as people we can get better at practically everything. It’s a matter of setting our minds to it and being clear about what we want to achieve.
Habits of good salespeople
1. An open mind to feedback
They can separate the wheat from the chaff with anyone. In other words, they believe everyone has something positive to offer them. They’re willing to learn the good things from each person without being influenced by the bad. They remain sponges, constantly learning.
2. A day-by-day perspective
The art of selling isn’t a gift. It’s very hard work. It’s often said that to become a professional at anything you need at least 1,000 hours of practice. Selling can take as many as 5,000 hours. In many professions there are hundreds of problems to solve, and once you’ve learned them all, over time the work becomes mechanical. Human excuses, questions, worries and needs aren’t set out in any manual, because they’re infinite: every person is different from the next. The art of selling consists of being able to lead each of those people onto your ground, which in this case is closing a sale. There’s only one way to learn that: “day by day, every day, for the rest of your days”.
See also: 25 habits of successful people
3. They research their customers
Obviously we can’t take this step in a cold call. But if we have an appointment with a company’s director or purchasing manager, very few salespeople stop to analyse that company, its distributor, the prices its supplier sells at, and so on. In a sale, the fewer things you leave to chance, the greater your chances of success.
4. They sell themselves
Selling just a product or service isn’t enough. You need to be confident in your own worth in any kind of business deal. You need to be completely convinced that you’re the most capable person in your field, and make sure your customer sees it too and recognises that, with this deal, they’ve come out ahead by getting great added value from you.
5. They take care of themselves and make a great first impression
As the famous saying goes: “You never get a second chance to make a first impression.” The way you dress, your gestures, your posture, your first words… all create an impression on the other person at first sight. If that impression is good, the customer will be more receptive. If it’s bad, the salesperson’s job doubles: “First build trust as a person, and then build trust in the product.”
Recommended for this point: 7 body language techniques that will help you in business
6. They know how to switch off completely
If a salesperson can’t leave behind their problems at home, with their partner or their children, and goes out to sell with all that on their mind, they’re lost. They can fall into what we call the vicious circle: “You bring problems from home, so you don’t perform at work. You go back home with the problem of not having made any sales, and the next day the wheel keeps turning.”
I’ve watched great salespeople fall into a completely self-destructive spiral because they couldn’t keep personal problems apart from work. I know many people think they can’t be separated, but believe me, even that can be learned.
7. They believe in the product they sell
If a salesperson believes in the product they sell, they won’t need many sales techniques to defend it. If they don’t believe in it, every sale will unconsciously feel like a lie to them, and that kills any passion when it comes to selling the product. Without that passion, we’re salespeople with a limp. Few companies spend the time needed to sell the product to their own salespeople before sending them out to sell it.
See also: The 5 best books for breaking bad habits
8. They tend to be opinion leaders
Here’s an exercise for you. Walk into a group of ten practising Catholics. Convince just two of them that abortion is the answer to an unwanted pregnancy and you’ll be a very successful salesperson. Most of the best salespeople I’ve known can argue against the unarguable in front of a group and leave it with nothing to say, without ever raising their voice. Always with respect, good manners and elegance, which are other qualities good salespeople share.
9. Successful salespeople are disciplined
Not just at work, but in life in general. This is similar to what an investor needs: we have to be disciplined both in our method and in our simplest habits.
10. They’re excellent communicators
Communication doesn’t depend only on our speaking skills, as many people believe. A good communicator stands out for being a great listener. We also need to become experts at reading our customers’ body language, whether they’re current or potential customers.
11. They’re self-assured
If you don’t trust yourself, who will? Successful salespeople, like successful people in any area of life, radiate self-confidence. They’re good at what they do, they know they’re good, they know their worth and they prove it every day, so they don’t worry about disparaging remarks born of jealousy or envy, and they don’t take the bait in that kind of conflict. They tend to be excellent at work and humble as people.
12. Good salespeople tend to give more than they receive
When you’re a great salesperson within a team, everyone tends to recognise you as the professional you are, but you can end up feeling alone, because people in the company may think you don’t need any help or advice. Yet people like this usually do everything they can to help the salesperson who’s just starting out, and they don’t expect anything in return.
They’re content with the satisfaction of having helped a colleague. By the same token, they’re not usually the kind of person who’s afraid to teach others what they know for fear of being overtaken.
13. They use their time wisely
Good salespeople probably work fewer hours than the rest, but their hours are much more productive. They don’t waste time on customers who, after five minutes, they can tell aren’t paying proper attention. That way they avoid “burning out” on anti-purchase excuses and save their energy for the next one. Because they’re more organised than the rest, they also lose less time stopping to think “what do I do now, and where do I go next?”
See also: Why do companies struggle to find good salespeople?
14. They never stop learning
If you want to earn more, you need to learn more. Good salespeople know that both failure and success can be temporary, and that they come from action (in the case of success) or inaction (in the case of failure). They also know that once they’ve made it to the top, it’s no time to fall asleep but to stay ambitious. You don’t know whether the wind will blow in your favour tomorrow, so make the most of the good times.
15. They avoid these mistakes
I could make a long list of the mistakes most people make when they go into sales, but they aren’t really mistakes specific to the profession. They’re more attitudes or habits the person needs to change.
- 1. Thinking nobody can teach you anything: You’re already the best, even if your results are dreadful.
- 2. “Whoever sells more than me has a better territory, better customers or more luck”: For salespeople who think this way and believe in luck, Lady Luck mysteriously always falls on the same people and never on them.
- 3. Talking too much: Many salespeople confuse being a good communicator with being a smooth talker, or with delivering a speech packed with jargon to show how much they know about the subject. That’s when the customer says: “What a clever guy, but I haven’t even figured out what he’s selling.”
- 4. Always doing the same things and expecting different results: As with investing, if our method keeps producing losses and we don’t change it, we’ll keep losing. But of course, to change a method you first have to admit you’re getting it wrong, and not everyone is able to do that.
- 5. Lying: Many salespeople lie to their customers about the product or the terms of the purchase so as not to lose the sale. Others lie to their bosses for various reasons, and a great many lie to themselves, to the point of believing hundreds of excuses.
- And the worst mistake of all: thinking selling is easy. Many people think sales is easy because they look at good salespeople who make it look easy. Others think that someone who can’t do anything else, or isn’t qualified for anything, can always work in sales. And yes, you can, but surviving will be hard if you don’t make an effort to learn.
As you’ll have seen, paying attention to some of these habits would help us not only in sales, but in most professions and areas of our lives.
Read my personal story: The day I stopped being a terrible salesman
Featured image: Jean-Etienne Minh-Duy Poirrier, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
