“What does it take to become a great salesperson?”
Contrary to what most people believe, becoming a great salesperson is not as much about what you sell as it is about who you are.
To help you become a great salesperson, I’ve listed below my 10 best sales tips I feel everyone in sales needs to embrace if they want to move to the top of the food chain.
Sales is a great profession. Each year I’m in sales, I become more passionate about it. It’s all about helping others. Sure, the financial rewards can be great, but that’s only a numeric scorecard.  Regardless of what you sell, it’s about helping others achieve something–that’s the real reward.
Here’s my list of the 10 best tips you need to focus on if you want to become a great salesperson. As you read the list, you’ll notice the word passion is not on the list. The reason is simple — passion is an outcome of what I believe will happen when you commit yourself to the ten things listed.
1. Personal discipline
This means having a plan and sticking to it. Sales is a game of consistency. You have to be able to remain focused on your objectives in both good times and bad times.
2. Repeat
One of the biggest things salespeople fail to do is follow-up and follow-through on what they say they’re going to do. This is not only key in nurturing customers, but also in staying committed during the prospecting phase. The customer isn’t going to wait for you. It’s up to you reach them.
3. It’s about the customer. It’s NOT about you.
Customers don’t care about you. They have their own problems and that’s what they want help handling. When we remove from our mindset our pride, and shift to thinking about the customer, it’s incredible the insights we’ll develop.
4. Leverage your personality
Sales is a people business, and when we allow our personality to come through, it’s amazing how much better we connect with others.
5. Ask great questions
We’ll become far more respected based on the questions we ask rather than on the information we share. We’re not going to find out the customer’s needs if we’re doing all the talking. It’s a simple concept, yet overlooked far too often.
6. Value your time
The most valuable asset we have is our time, and how we choose to use it determines our results. We will never become the best we can be if we’re spending our time focused on non-productive activities.
Read these 10 Time Management Strategies for Salespeople for more ideas.
7. Never stop learning
The smart people are smart because they know they have to continually be learning. An objective I’ve had for years is to learn something new each day.
The Sales Hunter University is an incredible place for sales training and personal growth. Check out our masterclasses on Prospecting, Pricing, or Follow-Up (and more!). Or, consider a membership that includes coaching, office hours with The Sales Hunter, weekly motivational emails, and much more.
8. Have mentors and peers
We become a product of our environment. Successful people associate with successful people.  This might mean there are people from whom you need to disconnect, but doing so will change your environment and your thinking for the better.
Read here for 7 Ways to Upgrade Your Sales Network
9. Personal ownership
It’s not someone else’s fault. That’s what low performers think, and it’s even an excuse average performers use. Customers don’t want to do business with people who blame others. They want to do business with people who take ownership and make it happen.
10. Integrity and trust
I list this last for a reason. To me this is the most important one of the 10 and the one that must be the foundation from which the other nine are built on.  When we live a life of integrity and trust, we have no regrets. We have a sense of peace others will see. Integrity and trust are two things everyone will say they have, yet I believe these qualities are only valid if we see them in how they live.
I invite you to study this ’10 Best’ list. Think through how you will apply the list and then go out and live the list. When you do, I know you will achieve results far greater than you’re achieving now.
Click here to learn more about taking masterclasses such as
Email Prospecting, Phone Prospecting, or Annual Planning.
Copyright 2018, Mark Hunter “The Sales Hunter.” Sales Motivation Blog. Mark Hunter is the author of High-Profit Prospecting: Powerful Strategies to Find the Best Leads and Drive Breakthrough Sales Results
A statement of the obvious, not to mention pretty patronising and condescending to the reader..
Mark ,
That list probably should be titled the 10 commandments of Sales. Every one of those tips is so very important in the Sales world. I see sales people all the make their job a whole lot harder than it has to be.
If Sales People in todays work force would adopt these 10 principals and live them daily then they couldn’t help but be successful.
Best regards,
Mark Craig
Many thanks Mark for your great tips and advice, always appreciated.
Best regards
Barry.
Great Mark, thanks for this piece, well thoughtful
Nice tips, I will follow in comming days