1. Self Discipline: The Ability to Keep One’s Commitments to Oneself.
Self discipline is truly the foundational attribute of great performers, including great salespeople. It is this discipline that allows them to take the actions that some put off and most never take. It separates the top performers from the rest of the pack. More often than not, it allows those with less skills and more desire to outperform those with greater skill and less discipline.
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2. Optimism: A Positive Mental Attitude
A salesperson has to be optimistic. They have to believe they can win against even the longest of odds. Salespeople have to believe that things will work out in their favor. This optimistic belief is what allows a salesperson to take action, and those actions are what eventually leads to success.
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3. Competitiveness: A Desire to Win
Competitiveness has come to been seen as a negative characteristic. It isn’t.
Sales is a zero sum game. The best salespeople have a competitive nature that allows them to believe that they can win and motivates them to take actions in line with those beliefs.
Competitiveness in Salespeople
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4. Initiative: The Ability to Take Action
Initiative is the ability to take action proactively. It means taking action before the action is required or necessary. Being a professional in sales requires many attributes, and Initiative is high on that list. It is a defining attribute of professionalism, and it creates opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t exist.
Initiative: The Ability to Take Action Proactively
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5. Resourcefulness: The Ability to Find Way, or to Make One
The role of the professional salespeople continues to change, and it continues to require more critical thinking and creativity. In order to succeed in sales, professional salespeople need to be resourceful, and they need to bring their creativity, their imagination, and their ability to identify and manage resources to bear on their prospect and customer’s challenges and opportunities.
Resourcefulness: The Ability to Find a Way
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6. Determination: The Ability to Persevere
Determination is an essential attribute of great salespeople, allowing them to succeed where others fail. It provides the salesperson with an immunity to the word “no.” Determination allows the professional salesperson to persist in their efforts to acquire new clients and to succeed in delivering the outcomes they have promised.
Determination: The Ability to Persevere
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7. Caring: A Desire to Achieve a Positive Outcome for Others
Sales is about creating positive outcomes for others.
In order to create these positive outcomes for others, the salesperson has to have both the desire and the ability to do so. Caring is the desire to create these outcomes, and the force underlying the actions they take to ensure that the outcomes are achieved for their clients.
Caring: The Desire to Achieve a Positive Outcome for Others
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8. Empathy: The Ability to Connect with Others
Great salespeople have the ability to create high-level rapport with their prospects and their clients. Great salespeople have the ability to connect on a very human level. This rapport is built upon the salesperson’s empathy and their emotional intelligence. These attributes combine to generate trust and confidence, and they are the foundation of long-term relationships.
Empathy and Emotional Intelligence: The Ability to Connect
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9. Communication: The Ability to Listen and Explain Ideas
Great salespeople have the ability to speak well and to convey their ideas and their solutions. This ability in great salespeople is never exercised until they have exercised the even greater communication skill of listening first. Great salespeople listen to understand, and they know that it conveys the even more important communication that they care.
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10. Influence: The Ability to Persuade Others
Influence isn’t tactical. Influence is the sum of all of the foundational attributes that make you someone worth listening to in the first place. The best salespeople possess the ability to influence and persuade others, because they are people who create trust. That trust builds relationships and it helps build results. These are the keys to influence.
Influence: The Ability to Persuade Others
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11. Passionate Engagement: The 11th Attribute
Passion is a compelling emotional feeling or state. It is by definition a strong feeling, but it something more than that. It is the compulsion to act on the strong feeling. It is irresistible and it cannot easily be restrained.
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