5 Character Traits of Amazing Salespeople

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Are you an amazing, high-performance, salesperson? 

Most likely you are not. Or you are not willing to admit it.

Why else did you click the link to this article?

But, as you will soon find out, self-awareness is one of the greatest traits of great salespeople. Another great trait is being humble.

Admitting that there are always ways you can become better at whatever you do and having the willingness to do something about it.

The Character traits of amazing salespeople and how to achieve them:

Growth Mindset

Successful salespeople have a growth mindset.

Not only for the companies they’ve worked for (or want to work for), but for themselves. Learning from mistakes. Overcoming challenges. All of these are signs that you are capable of growth.

A growth mindset should be personal and professional. Often, the most skilled salespeople are focused both on financial success and personal growth.

You can start by listing your weaknesses. Figure out how you can eliminate them the most you can or, and pardon the cliché, turn them into strengths.

Find out what you aspire to become or where you want to be in 10 years and start making a year-by-year roadmap. Then break each year down to action points that you can work towards. Make note of your achievements towards your goals and don’t forget to write down personal growth that occurred outside of your goals.

And remember that your goals can change. Don’t be afraid to make alterations along the way.

Self-Awareness

Let’s make it clear: we are not referring to self-awareness in the sense of suddenly becoming self-aware at a party or other social circumstances. 

Self-awareness is integral to having a growth mindset. Those who want to work on themselves are more likely to be self-aware.

It makes them good listeners too. Whereas, it can be easy to go into sales (and sometimes do well) if all you want to do is sell things and make lots of money. 

That’s not necessarily a bad thing. But a “sell, sell, sell” attitude isn’t going to work in a consultative selling environment.

You need to become a salesperson who can build rapport and trust, win new clients, and convert them in the right way.

Self-awareness is an integral part of having the right attitude for your growth goals. 

Amazing Listening Skills

Top salespeople are great listeners. Asking smart questions and practicing active listening are crucial.

Do you think that you are a great listener?

Record a couple of your sales calls and make notes to see whether you listen to the questions asked by your prospects. Did you repeat back/paraphrase at times? Did you ask smart questions? Did you use silence strategically to get more info from the prospect?

These kinds of things indicate whether you are a good listener or not.

Bad listeners don’t listen (well, duh). Instead, they rush to speak. Talking more than they listen. Keen to sell themselves, a product/service, rather than listening to what the other person is saying. 

Figure out the perfect ratio between you talking and the prospect talking. It can be highly dependent on your personal sales style. But don’t stress it too much since the occasional prospect might not be very talkative to begin with.

They Have Identified Their Sales WINS

Success in sales, even if you only had a couple years of previous experience, means having persistence. Generating new leads, winning customers, and always hustling to secure new revenue.

Figure out your WINS. Closed sales are of course the biggest WINS but figure out all the small WINS that lead up to the close.

Small WINS can be highly personal. If you are just starting, being able to make the first cold call can be an important small WIN (even successful, veteran salespeople are afraid of making the first cold call of the day). 

Start writing down your personal WINS. Start with a long list and keep a daily score. When you begin to convert more prospects into clients, you will begin to see a pattern emerge. Now you can start to remove some of the small WINS that you don’t think attribute to the Big WIN.

They Have the Conversation Under Control

You will need to ask smart questions, listen, make a pitch, and control the conversation. That means guiding a sales lead in the right direction.

Which means shifting gears. From smart questions to active listening, to making a pitch, and tailoring solutions around a prospect’s pain points. 

It’s a great idea to have some sort of a script in front of your eyes. But don’t use a script that has everything word-by-word. Sales conversations rarely go out as planned.

Think of the script as a map of the journey ahead or even a checklist. When you have Covered A, you can check that off the list and then move on to B. If the sales conversation flows naturally, most of the answers that you are looking for come naturally through the conversation but it’s great to keep the flow under your control and know when to steer or nudge the discussion in the right way.

Conclusion

It’s never too early or too late to hone your sales skills.

By working on these traits and applying them, you will start to make progress toward making lasting relationships with your prospects and converting them into recurring clients.