The profile of a top seller; or, What the best do differently

Steve W. Martin is an American coach, author and lecturer at the University of Southern California Marshall School of Business. He recently carried out a study involving 1,000 sales professionals. The aim was to determine the personal traits and specifics of the best salespeople, who, for the purposes of this study, were defined as those who had managed to achieve more than 125% of their yearly business plans. The results of this interesting project have now been published for the first time.

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The results, published by the Harvard Business Review server, show that the best business people have the following traits:

1. Personal mission

Business is all about money, so it is no surprise that salespeople are motivated mainly by money. The top sellers, however, see their work as a mission and they care very much about being the best among their co-workers, as well as being respected by both colleagues and clients as excellent professionals.

2. Interest in the sales field

Some salespeople end up in the profession simply because they did not manage to find anything else. And what is worse, the result of this is that they have a lukewarm attitude towards the job. But top business people are proud to be in sales; they are interested in what is new in the field, they follow the newest trends and they keep educating themselves.

3. Childhood and education

The study analysed what kind of childhood the top salespeople had had and what their favourite subjects at school were. The most frequent answers were almost equally distributed among history, science and maths. On the other hand, the least popular subjects were PE, foreign languages and art.

4. Engaging the emotions of a client

Top salespeople are aware that it is extremely important to appeal to prospects' emotions, which is why they focus on getting on the same wavelength as their clients on a personal level. 49% of the best business people stated that likeability and giving a good impression form the main difference between themselves and their less successful colleagues.

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Article source Harvard Business Review - flagship magazine of Harvard Business School
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