What makes a great salesperson?
This is one question I’m asked daily by salespeople and entrepreneurs alike.
Sales can be one of the most satisfying professions especially if you know what you are doing. One thing I love to tell people is that nothing is going to happen in the world until something is sold.
For example, when you get paid at the end of the month, you will walk into a shop, either TM or OK to pick up a bag of mealie meal. That might seem insignificant to you but that small sale is going to benefit the milling company, the maize farmer, the tractor manufacturer, and the fuel company.
Had OK or TM failed to sell that single bag of mealie meal, all the above companies would not have benefited and thousands of people would end up losing their jobs as a result.
This is why sales matter.
Now to address the question of what makes a great salesperson; My answer would be there are a lot of traits, over 100 of them but for this article, I’m going to be looking at 5 things, that if done daily can skyrocket your sales career.
Also, these are things that I and my sales team at M&J practice on a daily basis. Furthermore, when we do our Sales Training with our clients, we also work to instill these habits in their sales teams.
Here are the 5 things you should do daily to succeed in sales.
Training
Doctors practice medicine, lawyers practice law, engineers practice engineering, and teachers practice teaching. You can see that every other profession in the world is about practice. To succeed as a salesperson, you have to practice sales; there is no substitute.
Each day, I practice sales; I watch videos from experts, I read books, I listen to calls made by my team and most importantly I meet clients and take lessons. To be a successful salesperson, you should train every day.
Planning
If you don’t plan, you are going to find it very difficult to sell. Before you sleep, you should know what time you will wake up tomorrow, the first thing you are going to do in the morning, who you are going to call and meet, and where your money will come from.
Don’t just wake up and say you will see, that kind of attitude will greatly affect your ability to sell.
Meeting Clients
I hate it when I or any of my salespeople spend the whole day in the office. Your money is not in the office, your money is outside. My goal is to meet at least 5 new people daily.
If you want to sell, you have to go out and meet as many clients as you can.
You might argue that you run a shop and have to wait for clients to come. My response is that as long as you are still waiting for clients to come then your business is only achieving 5% of its sales potential. Real money is outside, in the market.
Check on my personal and my team’s performance
What are your daily sales? Your weekly sales? Your monthly sales? Your current annual sales vs last year? Your quote to lead ratio? Your pipeline value? Your close rate? Your monthly, weekly, and daily sales target?
If you need to look somewhere to get those numbers, then you are doing something wrong. As a salesperson, you should have this information at your fingertips. The amount of people I meet daily who don’t have this information on hand is worrying.
Numbers are everything.
Follow Up On High Priority Clients
This should be obvious but a lot of our salespeople leave it out which is worrying.
How many times have you been followed up on by a salesperson after inquiring on something you intended to purchase.
Many of our salespeople don’t care about following up.
If you want to succeed you should check up on the progress of your high-priority clients daily. It’s important.
To conclude, if you make it a habit to practice these five things on a daily basis, your sales will skyrocket.
NB. I’m going to be hosting a sales class on the 5th of May 2022. I want you to be part of it. You can sign up here.
