What makes a great salesperson? Is it someone who is resilient and hungry for success, or belligerent and selfish, as often caricatured on The Apprentice?
This question motivated the founders of business coaching company, Transform Performance International, to undertake a global research project to find out what top salespeople do, who they are and what they believe.
Their findings will feature in a new book to be released in September, the Salesperson’s Secret Code, co-authored by Mark Ridley, Ian Mills, Tim Chapman and Dr Ben Laker.
The team interviewed 1,000 salespeople – 500 top sales performers and 500 staff with an average sales record – to work out the formula for success. “When we looked at the analysis, we realised it didn’t matter whether you talked to a top performer or a less well-performing person, they all talked around five core beliefs: fulfilment, control, resilience, influence and communication,” says Ridley.
The difference between the top performers and the average performers, he says, was the way the subjects described their beliefs around these five core subjects. “In financial services you can no longer afford to recruit people who don’t have the right belief system,” says Ridley.
So how does an extraordinary salesperson think? And how can businesses make sure they recruit those people into their organisation?
Look for balance, not extremes
Ridley and his team found the top salespeople were more balanced, rather than the stereotype of having extreme personalities.
For example, all the salespeople – both low performing and top performing – said they felt fulfilled by success. For “most lower performing people, fear of failure drove them [to succeed] more than another belief we identified in the top performers, which was ‘I want to be better than I ever thought I could be,’” Ridley explains.
The research shows that top salespeople were still fearful of failure, but this fear was significantly outweighed by their desire to be the best they could possibly be.
Emotional intelligence
The distinction between the top performers’ beliefs and those of the average performers was subtle, but broadly speaking those at the top demonstrated high emotional intelligence, Ridley says.
The top performers generally had high levels of self-regard and self-awareness – indicators of emotional intelligence, he explains. “For example, a lot of lower performers would make statements about themselves but actually, it was a blind spot. They had all the talk but they didn’t really know what they meant by it,” Ridley says.
Ask the right questions
To spot these candidates in an interview, Ridley recommends forgetting the classic sales interview questions, for example, asking for evidence of a candidate’s sales record. “Probably more than many other job groups, [salespeople] are very good at providing insight into what they believe someone wants to hear,” he says. “If you’re going to interview people in the right way, you’ve got to ask them questions in ways that give them freedom.”
To avoid this in the research process, Ridley’s team asked questions that may have appeared to bequite loose, but were actually constructed to allow the subjects to take the conversation where they wanted to take it. “They were ‘tell me’, ‘share with me’ kind of questions. ‘What’s it like being a salesperson?’” he explains.
Don’t change behaviour, change beliefs
It’s possible to foster these traits in individuals, Ridley says, but you have to try to shift their beliefs. “If you want to truly make change happen, you can’t simply put people on training courses and give them a new skill. If they’re held back by limiting beliefs they’re never going to use that skill,” he explains.
“Think about what you see in your organisation that causes certain behaviours. The idea that ‘there’s too much admin around here; if I had less admin I could sell more’, is a belief, not a truth. How can sales leaders help people reframe that? Can they find examples of people who use a customer relationship management system in a successful or efficient way – because there’s always someone who’s doing it well,” Ridley suggests.
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