The 10 features of the best salespeople

When you start working in the sales sector you will immediately realize that there are some professionals who seem to be better suited to this type of work than others who, while working with all their means, are never able to achieve the desired results. However, although some have an innate predisposition to certain jobs, including that of salesman, it should be emphasized that there are many skills (characteristics of sellers) that can be acquired over time, learning from the best and trying to eliminate or limit their weaknesses, both character and professional. To do this, it is necessary to understand what are the ten main characteristics of a good professional in the field of sales and that, in most cases, are precisely those that are required from candidates during a selection interview for salespeople.

Below is a list of some of the main characteristics of salespeople.

1 – Organisation

The organization of a salesperson is one of the features that is best evident from the selection phase. The candidate who knows how to organize himself presents himself with the utmost punctuality and precision, bringing with him all the material he may need to present himself and his previous work and to highlight his qualities. During the working days he knows how to work in a systematic way, fixing a number of appointments that he or she is able to manage and always keeping some free time to face possible emergencies, inconveniences and personal needs. These include meetings, refresher courses and congresses where the salesperson can come into contact with different realities, fundamental for a continuous growth in his or her field of interest.

2 – Study

Whoever wants to sell must also be able to do it. For this reason it is always necessary to keep up to date on your product and those of competitors, so that you always have clear what to say to the customer, preventing his questions and always answering them safely and decisively. There is nothing worse than a salesman who knows how to talk only about his product without having expertise in markets that offer similar solutions, but never the same. The differences are those on which the salesperson must be able to focus but, in order to know how to do it, he must have a thorough knowledge of them. During a selection for salespeople will be easy to understand if the candidates are interested and passionate about the work they do and if they are able to make the recruiter curious about the product or if they have only a sterile knowledge, not very useful for the sale.

3 – Experience

Surely experience is fundamental to be able to have a good mastery of the work. However, even when you are a beginner, it is important never to show yourself as an amateur, let alone as a schoolboy who is repeating a lesson by heart. In order to be able to sell your product and to arouse interest in the buyer you also need to be able to show your competence and preparation. A customer will be much more inclined to buy a product from a skilled and prepared salesperson rather than one who is clumsy and repeats the characteristics of the items he or she intends to sell. Once again, experience is flanked by knowledge, which allows you to illustrate with greater knowledge not only your goods, but also the differences with respect to competing products and positions within the markets of reference.

4 – Language properties

Language property is one of the main characteristics of sellers that is evaluated during a selection interview. You cannot think that you can sell a product if you are not able to use correct language, which is colloquial but at the same time, if necessary, characterized by technical terminology. Language ownership is not only essential for the sale of products or services: it is a key element when it comes to being able to handle criticism or objections from buyers. When you want to become a successful salesperson, you need to be aware of a number of sales techniques that affect language, the use of terms and ways of conversations that inspire confidence and aim to be positive. Dryly contesting the customer’s objections is never the right option: leading the conversation towards a direction of open-mindedness and, above all, being customer-friendly becomes a way to regain the possibility of dialogue.

5 – Self-management

In his career, a salesman will have successes and failures. Needless to deny that, especially at the beginning, failures will probably be very frequent: and yet at each new sale the professional will know how to self-manage his mood and his emotions to start all over again, without negative influences from a previous failure. If you have the right sales technique and have planned the different strategies to be implemented, failures are anticipated, so they don’t have to affect your conduct, your mood and your relationship with other customers.

6 – Mood

Closely connected with the ability to manage one’s own work, successes and failures, there is the ability to always be in a good mood. This factor can also be easily assessed during an interview for the selection of salespeople: needless to say that showing up with a smile and self-confidence at the job interview allows you to assess the candidate in the best possible way. In the same way, a client will be more well disposed towards the salesperson if he or she presents himself with a serene and smiling face. Even in times of tension, for any discussions with customers who are not satisfied with the products or with people who prefer to use competing brands, being able to keep in a good mood is not only a way to avoid creating further critical issues with the customer, but above all it is essential not to be influenced on subsequent appointments.

7 – Sincerity

A high level salesman is not able to lie: this means that he himself or she herself must firmly believe in the product he or she promotes. That’s why when you pass the selection of salespeople, companies do training courses to teach not so much how to sell, but to know the qualities, the merits and the defects of their products, because only a deep knowledge is able to make the salespeople first to understand the quality of what you propose. Needless to say, if the seller is not convinced of what he or she says to promote his or her products or services, he or she will hardly be able to convince others.

8 – Listening

The good salesperson is not the one who learns to sing his own presentation and hopes in this way to convince the customer. Already during the selection phase of salespeople, candidates who know how to highlight that they are able to listen to customers and their needs will have more space than those who only know how to repeat the same rhyme over and over again. The successful seller, in fact, before sterilely proposing his or her product knows how to listen to customers’ needs, in order to tailor his or her offer to their needs. To understand the importance of this point, just think of the different types of people who may be interested in a particular article: the more experienced ones will want to know specific details, the less experienced ones will have more general questions to ask. The salespeople will be able to listen to everyone, answering technical or non-technical questions in order to satisfy the requests of those who are interested.

9 – Versatility

One of the main elements of a salesman’s success is his or her versatility, not only in being able to present and represent different types of products, but especially in being able to dress different clothes, i.e. playing different roles as needed. When you make a selection for salespeople, in fact, you do not only evaluate the ability to sell, i.e. communication that the candidate can show. Other aspects must also be taken into consideration. The successful salesperson, in fact, must have good administrative knowledge, in order to be able to close a contract and answer questions related to it; he or she must be a good technician, able to highlight the characteristics and qualities of the product; he or she must be empathetic, in order to understand how to approach a new customer and, above all, when he or she must aim at customer loyalty. This is why when we talk about a salesperson we are actually talking about a complete and complex figure, able to play different roles according to needs.

10 – Satisfaction

Probably it seems a superfluous point but instead it represents the fundamental one: a successful salesperson must be above all a person who loves his or her job, satisfied with his skills but at the same time never tired of learning new techniques and methodologies to keep up to date with the products on the market and, above all, with sales strategies, both technical and economic factors and the more strictly human ones, in order to understand customers and get more in tune with their real needs.

Salespeople characteristics and selection of business profiles

The selection of salespeople involves the evaluation of a number of aspects (characteristics of sellers), not all of which are easily recognizable. Moreover, it is undeniable that some of the aspects that characterize a good salespeople are innate while others are bought with experience and study. This is why it is essential to evaluate a candidate from different points of view, not only for his or her previous experience, ability to speak or technical knowledge of the articles to be promoted.