Nature vs. Nurture: Sales Traits You Can Learn -- Part 2

(ICYMI, be sure to read Part One of this series here.)

You can learn persistence, the first trait, through proper sales training focused on the right skills. By giving salespeople powerful tools in the form of sales strategies, they can overcome the obstacles to persistence. When sales fail, persistence is the first to suffer. With DMTraining’s unique approach, sellers learn how to persist through obstacles and how to build lead, prospect, and deal flow.

The second trait is being goal-oriented. All sales goals essentially lead back to one thing: Money. Whether it’s the revenue target or a seller’s own commission hopes, making more money is the name of the game.

So how can we use this underlying motivator as an advantage?

Most answers to the question are soft, something along the lines of “work harder, work smarter, work more productively and go after bigger accounts.”

All of these responses sound right -- except that most sellers are already working as hard, smart and productively as they believe is possible. They’re already going after the biggest possible deals they can find.

If making more money depends on sellers doing the same things even harder, then they’re essentially set up for failure.

Today’s sales are the end result of a lot of different kinds of activities over a long period of time. If you can recognize your own patterns, segment the activities that take up your time and then optimize your selling time -- while comparing our s efforts to results (through real-time activity dashboards, such as pipelines, forecasts and activity reports) -- you can, with the same 100 percent effort, make more money.

Which activities move the needle on results? The ones that directly impact income. Sellers need to get continuously better at finding the right people to talk to, building a pipeline of those people and negotiating and closing the right number of deals with those people and their companies.

Prospect management training will encourage the right sales traits. It focuses the seller’s attention on maximizing time with those sales most likely to close. It also creates sales strategies most likely to advance sales.

Develop a long-term, self-marketing campaign that includes lead generation and networking. This, along with  tactical appointment-making skills will reach top-level decision makers and influencers. Nothing increases a seller’s position of strength more than an ability to reach other qualified and potentially interested people.

Negotiation training is not simply hammering out T&Cs but before, during and after the negotiation event.With efficient training, some of the most successful salespeople and managers start off human and become superhuman. Are you looking for this kind of change?

Stay tuned for Part 3 of this series, in which we will look at ways to teach essential organization skills.

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