The characteristics that define top sales people

We map the core traits and skills that help sellers move from pressure tactics to partnership. Humility, ownership, curiosity, and empathy combine with consultative methods, smart tooling, and steady learning to close complex deals with less friction.

• internal motivation over external validation
• humility and a team-first mindset with clients and stakeholders
• conscientious ownership and clear communication
• achievement focus and practical leadership
• deep curiosity to surface constraints and risks
• resilience under pressure and after setbacks
• empathy across all parties to prevent surprises
• consultative discovery and value quantification
• active listening with note-taking and reflection
• tech savvy workflow, AI and CRM to save time
• data-driven planning and clean pipeline hygiene
• collaboration rhythms across service, finance and operations
• continuous learning to adapt skills and tools

Please like, subscribe, give me a share, give me a comment. And maybe if there's something you'd like me to cover, just let me know

Welcome to the podcast!

Chapters

• 0:13 Setting The Stage: Sales Traits
• 0:57 Internal Motivation Over Neediness
• 2:20 Ditching The Pushy Persona
• 3:34 Humility And Team Mindset
• 4:50 Ownership And Conscientious Selling
• 6:06 Achievement Focus And Leadership
• 7:11 Curiosity That Drives Delivery
• 9:15 Resilience And Empathy Under Pressure
• 10:54 Consultative Skills And Value
• 13:34 Active Listening In Practice
• 15:09 Tech Savvy And Time Leverage
• 18:14 Data, Collaboration, And Planning

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:07

Hello again and welcome to another podcast. In this one, I'm going to build on what I've been talking about over the last few podcasts and look at the key traits of successful salespeople. And hopefully, you'll identify a lot of these, and maybe you'll identify some areas where you can improve. So that's really what I'm looking for as an outcome from this podcast. So I'm Graeme Elliott from Salescraft Training. And one thing that I missed last time that we uh was that, I'll spit it out. The last podcast was my 75th podcast. So thank you to everybody who has been supporting the podcast. And hopefully you're getting value from it. And I'm giving you things that you can implement.

unknown: 0:50

Right.

SPEAKER_00: 0:51

So one of the things that has been consistent over the last few podcasts where I've looked at various aspects of controlling a deal, various traps you can fall into, is that successful salespeople are internally motivated. So what I mean by that is they're not looking for external things to happen in order to feel confident or successful or whatever it is that drives them. So this and one of the areas this comes up a lot is when we're having that meeting and maybe we're under a little bit of pressure, and I've spoken about this a few times, and it's where you walk in and you need that deal. You've just got to get that deal. So this is where it becomes where the salesperson is dependent on that external event happening, and that sends all the wrong signals to the buyer, it puts up additional barriers, it's likely to raise objections that maybe would never have come up. So this is really important. And what I mean by internal is when you go into a deal, even if you're under a bit of pressure, is to step back from all of that stuff and just go into understanding what the client's problem is and working to resolve it. So this is what I'm going to really be looking at in this podcast today. So just looking at personality-wise, one of the big issues with sales, whether you're going into it or if you're a buyer, or if you're just likely to buy anything, is that I think pretty much all of us hate that pushy salesperson. And I know for a lot of people moving into sales, that's the person they most definitely don't want to be. And we've all come across them. These people are just pushing for a deal. It's lots and lots of pressure. They kind of back you into a corner sometimes, just with questions they're asking. And it can be quite tough saying no to them. And often what will happen is that if you're lucky, uh you will put off making the decision and then never speak to them again, just not take their calls, not see them do any of that. So that's the pushy salesperson. I think most of us would don't want to be that, and that is certainly, in my opinion, not how you're successful in sales. It's much more important to be consultative, to work with the client, and this is a consistent theme through the podcast and also my uh on the online training course, consultative selling. So, how does that work as a personality? So the first thing is humility, modesty. Really good salespeople are not about their ego, they're much more focused on the team. And how you define that team, I guess, is really up to you. But in my view, in my experience, the team itself includes the client, it includes their stakeholder, whether that's the person you're dealing with directly or somebody else involved. So it's about understanding their needs and it's about working within your own organization. So I've worked for manufacturers, I've worked for companies that import. When I've been in Australia, that's been a fairly key thing. We'll be willing importing from, say, the UK or Europe or elsewhere. So other people on the team would be people from the manufacturer. So the important thing about this is to recognise that the team is not just your organization, it's your client, it's anybody else who needs to be involved in the sale. And I've even worked on more complex deals where I've had to bring in third parties or subcontractors that everybody involved in this deal is part of the team. And what you're focused on is making sure that everybody is winning, everybody is understanding, everybody is basically in the right place to move this forward. And that brings me on nicely to the next characteristic, which is basically being conscientious. In other words, conscientious if I didn't say that correctly, but in other words, taking ownership. It's about doing the right thing. It's you could look at it as morals, it's um definitely not trying to rip anybody off. That to me is completely uh uh out of the picture. We that's not how salespeople operate. Remember, salespeople are problem solvers. So when you're conscientious about what's going on, it means you're taking ownership. If there's a problem, you own it, and the reason that you own it is that you can then get it resolved. The people who try and pass the buck on to others, they are not in control of that sale. They haven't taken ownership, and that's where things will definitely go wrong for them. So again, top performance will take an attitude of the buck stops here, I'm gonna own it, I'm gonna sort this out. I might not be able to do it on my own, I probably can't do it on my own, but I will involve the people who need to be involved and make sure they're properly briefed and that the communication between those people, the client, and anybody else who needs to be involved, that that communication is good. The next thing is that they're achievement oriented, and what I mean by that is that they are focused on getting the result. So again, it's about win-win, but they're self-driven. They are willing to get up in the morning, really be clear about what's to happen what has to happen that day in order for the ultimate result to happen. And it may take quite a while in some cases, but it's really important that we're clear on the steps and what needs to be happened this day, this week, this month, in order to bring this deal to a close. And this ties into ownership and it also ties into managing the team. So you're a leader, salespeople are leaders, in my opinion. And um, I'll come back to this uh later in in another aspect later on, but it's really important that we stand up as leaders. We are the leader that our client comes to, we're the leader that other people in our team come to. So we need to be really clear on what the steps are, who's responsible, and when they need to be uh completed. Another thing is to be curious. Now, this is so important, it's been the subject of several podcasts now, but this is just absolutely fundamental. It's about genuinely wanting to understand not only what the client's problem is and when how to resolve it, how they need it to be resolved, but also with other team members, what one of their issues, because it might come down to deliveries, it might come down to modifications that need to happen, but there will be various other aspects. So it's really important to be curious across the board and to ask questions so that you understand. And with the understanding, that means that you can deliver on time, or at least if things can't happen on time, you can flag that very early on to the client. It might be a deal breaker, if so, that's what it is, or the client may be able to change things so that you can still deliver in a way that will work for them. And I've definitely had this where I haven't been able to make a date. And basically, I've worked with people, and I remember with one particular client, uh, we had some uh quite complex um electronic equipment that was needed in production, and using the regular steps that the manufacturer wants to follow, we were going to miss the delivery, the critical delivery date by a couple of weeks. But by just talking to the teams, I realized that if we actually skip one of the steps, which was actually a post-production test, and actually ship first and then tested on site, that would actually cut out that two-week um part of the process. After talking to the people in manufacturing, I recognized there was a risk, there might still be a problem, but we talked it through. They altered the way they did their production a little bit, and it meant that we could actually hit the delivery day. But this is all about consultation with all of the interested parties. So this is again really important. So be a leader, stand up. You have to be resilient. Um, look, things won't always go as planned, problems will happen, there will be setbacks. It's really important that you you bounce back. And that doesn't mean that everything just washes off. Uh, I've definitely had times where I've come off a call and thought, okay, how do I deal with this? Because I did not see this coming. Um, but again, it's about that resilience. That might mean going for a walk, it might mean doing something where you just clear your head and get out of that maybe space where you're feeling pressured, but you get yourself out of it so that you can come back maybe the following day and look at it afresh. And genuinely, generally, I find that that's when I get ideas or at least questions to ask that might resolve the issue. So it's really important that you're resilient and deal with setbacks as they occur. And the final core trait is empathy, and it's about understanding the client's perspective. But if you are managing a broader team, it's about understanding everybody's perspective. Uh, if everybody's got a stake in this sale, then you need to understand what their concerns might be and make sure that they're all addressed ideally well ahead of time. Because if you do things early, you've generally got time to resolve issues, and the issues will generally stay quite small, whereas if you leave it until quite late in the day, then a small issue can suddenly become a huge problem, and it might derail the whole um deal. So these are very briefly the core traits to be aware of. So modesty, uh, being conscientious, taking ownership, being achievement focused, so being focused on the outcome and how to get there, being curious to making sure you really understand what's going on, be resilient, handle the setbacks as well as the good stuff when it goes well, and have empathy for everybody involved. So, in terms of skill sets, the things to focus on here are first of all being consultative. And primarily I'm looking at this in terms of the client. So being consultative with the client, understanding their needs, what's driven them to start taking action and be really focused on value. So I've spoken quite a lot about this in other podcasts. So I'm not going to dive into that too much here. But again, whenever we buy something, we're generally buying the value. We're not buying, we're not looking at the price. It doesn't stop with the price. And hopefully, the value, if you convert that to pounds, dollars, whatever currency you're using, that value will far outweigh the price. That's why we do it. So you need to understand what the value is for the client. That might be in time savings, it might be in convenience, it could be all sorts of things. But this is where asking those questions is really important because once we understand what the solution needs to deliver for the client, we can begin to put a dollar value around that. It's really important to be an active listener. What do I mean by that? It means just listening, basically. Because the thing that a lot of people will do is a client starts talking about a problem, and then you think, ah, I know how to solve that part, and then you wander off, oh yeah, we need these options or I need to have this set up or whatever. All the time your mind is doing that, you have stopped listening to the client. You might be something you might well miss something that's really important. So, my favorite activity, my favorite way of handling this is to take notes. I write down notes. I'm not too good at doing uh um iPads or whatnot computers quickly, but if that works for you, that's great. But I make sure I keep notes and I jot down key things. And if I've missed something, well, I will ask the client to repeat it. It'll be something like, sorry, I was I really need to write this down, and could you then please repeat what you just said? Because this is the key thing for me to be aware of. So active listening is is really listening and not just waiting to speak, which a lot of people do. They'll think of something, think of a solution, and then they're just waiting for a basically the client to stop talking so they can come in with whatever it is they just thought of. So really listen. Another aspect is being tech savvy. Now, um, I'm really looking at this from the perspective of operational um understanding, and that would be your CRM, it might be using AI. But what we're looking at is how do we it's about time management ultimately, it's about making the process steps as efficient and fast as possible. And the reason that we do that is it frees up our time so that we can put most of our time into the activities that are going to generate money for us. So we all have a limited number of hours per day. I'm not a fan of people working long, long hours, particularly out of hours. We need to part of the self-discipline is actually work life balance because, again, in my experience, and I'm pretty sure this is true, the better our life balance, the more we're able to spend time doing the things we love. That might involve other people, it might be hobbies, whatever it might be. And we put quality time in those activities, it means that when we are working, we're just far more efficient. We're probably fitter, healthier, sleeping better, all those kinds of things, all of those things mean that if you like our miles per gallon, that's just uh an analogy that popped into my head, or Ks per 100 Ks per litre, it gets far more efficient. So when we are working with somebody, we've really switched on. You know, we're sharp, we're not over trying to fight fatigue or whatever else it might be. And when we're in that sort of a situation where we're stressed, where we're tired, we're gonna miss stuff. Absolutely. So be tech savvy, focus on high-ticket activities. So in other words, if you had to put a dollar value against every activity you do, the low ones, the low value ones, you need to automate or even put out to somebody else if you can. Finally, um, sorry, be data driven. So, in other words, make sure you understand facts, keep yourself updated as you go through the sales process, and then really collaborate. So work with your team members. So I spoke about this earlier, and one of the things I used to do when I was running a major account was to have was to sit down with um other departments within our organization. We were a manufacturer, but we also had to import from another country. This was in the UK. And once a month, I would just sit down with the service department who would be responsible for um on-site installations. I'd be talking about admin. Um, I might talk about fine with the um sorry, the accounting people, if they have to buy currency in order to um pay in this particular company, it was um a Japanese company, so we'd be paying it, buying in yen, um, but it might be US dollars or whatever. But it made sure that everybody was involved in the process, and I would talk about where deals were in terms of um progress. I would talk about when key events were likely to happen, so that might be one or two months ahead, but it allowed people to plan and then they could schedule their own work to suit my client and get the get these deals in and get everything happening smoothly. So I again, this is my choice, and it really worked for me. I would involve people who were critical to me delivering on time in my organization, I'd make sure they were briefed at least once a month and they had opportunity to ask their questions, they had visibility of what was going on, and then as things changed, I'd let them know straight away. But it's about working with the team and respecting that in order to provide a smooth delivery, smooth support to a client, the people who need to do that are aware of what's going on and they're not suddenly trying to reschedule everything. And obviously, when you just drop people in it, that doesn't really help you in creating a good team environment. Uh, it builds resentment among people, and some people, I've seen this, some people will deliberately uh uh try and mess things up for you. It's just you know, unfortunately, how some people are. So you can, by taking leadership, offset those kind of situations. And then the final thing I want to just touch on is continuous learning. Top salespeople are always learning, they're learning about maybe products that they have, solutions that they have, they're learning about what value is really delivered to clients, so older clients, what have they, how have they benefited from what they've bought? They might be looking at up upping their skills, whether it's AI, or might be taking um my consultative selling sales course, which you can find online. I'll put my ad in there. But we're lifelong learners, we're always learning about something uh that will um help us to be more efficient at what we do. So that is uh the podcast for this week. I hope you found that useful. I will be back next week, and um the intention is to continuously build. So these podcasts come out every Monday. And um as I say, I hope you find them useful. Please like, subscribe, give me a share, give me a comment. Um, and maybe if there's something you'd like me to cover, just let me know. Okay, so that's it for now. Have a great uh week, and I'll speak to you on Monday. Bye for now.