Do top salespeople have an innate knack for selling? Is the ability to sell a born instinct? Steve W. Martin, founder of the Heavy Hitter sales training program and author of the “Heavy Hitter” series of books, combines his field experience with extensive research to conclude that there are four key factors that determine a self-made salesperson's destiny: language specialization, "modeling" of experiences, political acumen, and greed.
Language Specialization. This goes beyond citing a product's features and business benefits to talking intelligently about the details of daily business operations. It means drilling down into an industry’s unique technical language, its abbreviations, acronyms, business nomenclature and specialized terms. Those who fail this test often rely on likability with prospective customers.
Modeling of Experiences. In learning and consolidating information from sales calls and interactions with customers, astute salespeople can predict what will happen and what to do based on what they've done in the past. Martin notes that modeling can be thought of as trying to find the what, when, where response—what you should do when you are in a particular circumstance. Successful self-made salespeople store and retrieve all the verbal, nonverbal, factual and intuitive information they acquire during sales calls and sales cycles.
Political Acumen. Successful self-made salespeople factor in the human nature of sales and how people and politics determine the outcome. Martin feels that political acumen is the ability to correctly map out each decision maker's influence and motivations.
Greed. Here, Martin notes that greed and self-respect are closely intertwined. Greed, in this sense, is simply wanting to be fairly compensated for one's time. Time determines the number of deals one can work and where the greatest sales effort should be expended. Greed drives successful self-made salespeople to push themselves to ask difficult qualifying questions and work toward the close.
Greta Schulz, Author of “To Sell is Not to Sell,” and President of Schulz Business SELLutions says, “How we buy has a direct correlation on how we sell. If you’re not an outgoing, vivacious, over-the-top personality, you still can and will be, if you want to be, a very successful person. Today’s buyers are much more savvy and they’re not going to spend money just because they like you.”
So while many top salespeople are gifted with innate talents, just as many are self-made who have learned to apply their language specialization skills and develop intuitive sales abilities. They spend their time on productive accounts and focus on an organization’s powerful decision-makers to make the sale. Sales trainer, author and consultant Alen Mayer provides even more data on this topic.
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