6 Skills I Learned From my Best Sales Professionals

One of the advantages of having led businesses across different sectors is the exposure it gave me to a variety of sales teams worldwide. This included sales professionals in commercial aviation, security and defense, healthcare, and software. I became acutely aware that while the geography, environment, and industry might differ, the sales professionals that impressed me the most – and by impress I mean delivered the top line consitently – were those whose skills and expertize went well beyond the stereotype of fancy wining, dining, and corporate gifts, and that consistently demonstrated 6 strengths.

If you are a business leader charged with growing a business, spend some time with your consistently best sales people to appreciate their unique skills and abilities and get them to cross-pollinate this to the rest of your sales teams. It will pay off in spades.

Inspire versus interest

High performing sales professionals can inspire their clients to dream the big dream versus only interesting them in the products or services they are selling. By getting their clients to dream big, they bring them to a place where the product or service being sold is a means to an end and not the end itself. This creates strong intimacy and builds a relationship for multiple sales to come.

Empathize versus report

My best performing sales leaders always felt the client’s pain. They demonstrate real empathy for their customer’s problems. They didn’t fake this. In fact that empathy lasted long after the sales was done. When the product development or customer service teams weren’t delivering on promises, or putting a client’s project at risk, the sale leader would scream far and wide from the company’s rooftop to make sure their client was heard and their pain felt.

Account versus sale

The consistently strong sales performers always managed accounts and not individual sales. They understood where their clients were heading with their important projects and developed a long-term strategy that would position our products or services along their client’s journey. They spent hours inside their clients’ organizations and understood how to swim upstream in their value chain to have access to bigger and bigger sales opportunities. Managing accounts keeps sales professionals one step ahead of their clients and creates a much better pipeline of opportunities.

Individual versus corporation

The sales people who consistently brought the best sales numbers knew how to differential between the individual client and the corporation the client worked in. They knew that a client is a human being who is being held accountable within a corporation and that accountability made them vulnerable. Great sales people understand this client vulnerability and ensure they minimize any risk in the purchasing decision-making.

Process versus person

To close deals, top sales individuals know intimately the purchasing process of their client’s organization. They don’t focus on the client who agreed to make the purchase but, rather, on the entire purchasing process. They know where the hurdles will be, how purchase orders are issued and where they can bog down. This allows the best of them to actually act as the internal goffer getting the PO from desk to desk until it reaches its final destination and gets issued.

Close versus contemplate

Finally, my go-to salesman and woman always knew how to get a deal closed. They didn’t spend time contemplating if the deal would close on time but actually spent their time making deals happen. They understood like no others how to deal with client objections in a way that was not too pushy yet moved things along nicely. Ultimately, they could be counted upon to deliver the sales targets they were given.