I was recently in Brisbane, Australia wrapping up a week of sales training for one of my favorite clients and we were going through a “No Holds Barred” Q&A session when one of the gang asked me “what is the #1 thing all sales people have in common. My reply was “that is an easy question to answer”!
For a number of days we had gone over some really deep, rich facets of successful selling and had focused on really critical strategies, tactics, skills and mindset but at the end of it all it was very easy to nail down what was the ONE THING with very little effort.
Before I answer the question I want you to know that there are two parts of my brain that simultaneous come to the same conclusion. The first part comes from the experiential and anecdotal side of my gray matter that was in sales for 17 years and has been delivering sales training for over 20 years. The second part of my brain comes of with the same answer as a part of the benchmarking of top sales professionals, doing assessments and cranking out comparative analysis, the assessment to the benchmark, on tens of 1,000’s sales professionals where we measure 23 core skills and core competencies. Both parts of my brain will independently and immediately cough up the exact same answer!
The Classroom In Brisbane!
The answer to the question “what is the #1 thing all top sales people have in common” is this … all top sales people are insatiable, fearless, curious, inquisitive learners! They possess the humility to know, even though they are already the best of the best, that there is always more to learn to improve at their craft! They read books, subscribe to Audible.com and listen to books, they subscribe to various blogs that teach them new things, the subscribe to podcasts to hear new ideas and they leverage social media like YouTube, Facebook, Linked-In and even Twitter to keep themselves inundated with new ideas. They are energized by the process of personal growth.
The average and below average sales rep finds the learning, and changing, too painful to take on. Or, they lack the humility to be willing to admit that they don’t know it all. They are fearful of simple things like integrating technology into their daily business processes. I have them in my classes all of the time talking about how dumb it is to text a customer and bemoaning the “good old days” when people would only do business face to face! While their far more successful counterparts are fielding messages from their clients and responding with needed information and closing deals via the “demon text” monster!
So? What is the last book you read or listened to? Blog you visited? Podcast you subscribed to? YouTube video you watched … to get better at your craft? If it was more than a week ago then it’s time to get in the game! If you want my Top 10 Business Books for Sales People list then shoot me an e-mail and I will send you a link to download it just to get you started.
What is the #1 thing all top sales people have in common? That’s easy …