For companies that want to supercharge their sales and marketing department, this is an absolutely crucial question. Excellence in sales is impossible without excellent salespeople, and if you want to grow your business and reach new customers, you need to make sure your personnel have what it takes.
To that end, here are five essential qualities you should look for when expanding your sales team.
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1. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is the ability to manage and monitor your own emotional responses to external stimuli. This is a key trait for salespeople to have, because it helps them stay cool and collected even during stressful or frustrating calls.
A salesperson who is all passion and no control can easily become agitated when a sales call isn’t going their way, and can cause them to lose customers who might have been won over with a little more patience and understanding.
2. Competitiveness
In order to thrive in the high-pressure world of sales, a person needs to be hungry for success. Competitive salespeople are driven to succeed regardless of the circumstances, and find even the toughest challenge stimulating and rewarding. Click here to see competitive typical sales commission rates.
Too much competitiveness can be a bad thing, of course, but not enough competitiveness is perhaps an even bigger problem. A salesperson who isn’t constantly trying to outdo themselves is never going to rise to the top.
3. Acumen
A good salesperson never stops learning, and when considering candidates for a sales associate role, you want to consider whether or not they have the right mix of intelligence and focused curiosity that will indicate their capacity to keep developing new skills.
This can be a hard thing to quantify, so it is worth working with sales recruitment agencies like Sales Talent Agency who use sophisticated software to determine which sales associates have demonstrated a strong capacity for growth.
4. Empathy
Sales is all about relating to people, and an empathetic salesperson is able to see the world through the customer’s eyes. Not only does empathy help salespeople establish a rapport, it also helps them craft a pitch that will appeal to the customer’s actual needs.
5. Resilience
“No” is a word a salesperson is going to hear a lot. And after the hundredth “no” of the day, it is only natural to get discouraged. The best salespeople are resilient enough to not take it personally, and maintain a positive attitude no matter how badly the day is going.
Resilient salespeople understand that every new call is a completely fresh start, and don’t let frustration about their previous failures get in the way of the next opportunity.
No matter what industry you operate in, a strong sales team is essential for success. Finding sales associates and executives who have the right mix of emotional intelligence, competitiveness, acumen, empathy, and resilience will help you ensure that your brand stays competitive regardless of what challenges may come your way.
