Sales Traits: 3 Characteristics of Top-Selling Salespeople

There has been a great deal written about what makes a good salesperson. What traits or skills should that person possess? While there isn’t always a clear answer, here are three top characteristics to look for in a salesperson that will give them the best chances for success.

Empathy

First is empathy, or the ability to feel what the customer wants or needs. This is not sympathy, but a trait that helps a salesperson illicit the feedback from the customer that is needed to guide a conversation toward a sale.

The ability to empathize with a customer is invaluable for not only anticipating and understanding their needs, but gauging reactions during the sales process. A salesperson with a good sense of empathy can adjust their actions depending on the emotional feedback they read from the customer.

Also, empathy helps a salesperson recognize the difference between what a customer needs as opposed to what they want. This is an example of a situation where a good salesperson can guide a customer through the sales process and end up with an outcome that is to the maximum benefit of both parties.

Having the ability to hone in on what the customer is feeling and thinking gives the salesperson the opportunity to turn negatives to positives and allay any reservations the customer may have.

Drive

Secondly, an effective salesperson has an innate drive to succeed. This has to do with the ego of the salesperson and it provides the impetus to make the sale. Ego is the important ingredient that causes a salesperson to take the success or failure of the sale personally.

Interestingly, for many salespeople, the sale is more important than the financial gain as it fills a personal need. History has undeniably shown that a salesperson will fail to make the sale more often than succeed, so an ego cannot be so fragile as to be devastated by that fact. It takes an ego that can balance success and failure.

In fact, a good salesperson will take failure as an opportunity to learn, and most importantly, as a catalyst to try harder to make the next sale and never give up.

Time management

Something else that’s found in almost every successful salesperson is somewhat of a combination of a trait and a skill: time management. Time is one of the most valuable resources belonging to a salesperson and using it wisely is paramount.

The days of spending hours on the phone or going door-to-door cold calling are over. There is too much competition and the world moves too quickly. A salesperson not only has to be organized, but must also know the tools that are available to help make the best use of time.

Generating leads and making sales calls is a time-consuming process at best, so a good salesperson is always looking for ways to utilize time most efficiently. Since artificial intelligence is integrated into the modern sales process, salespeople have a number of tools available to help save time.

One of those tools is predictive dialer systems, where a dialer dials a list of numbers and connects the answered calls to an agent or salesperson. If predictive dialers are part of an omnichannel platform where it is seamlessly integrated with other tools such as ringless voicemails, texting, and emails, a salesperson has the equivalent of a staff of people helping reach out for leads.

These solutions are specifically designed to get the best results in the most efficient amount of time. These tools can be indispensable for a salesperson.