Top quality of the best salespeople
People love numbers. When you title a blog “The top 10 most viewed . . .”; “Top 20 must-haves . . .”; “The best 5
. . .” etc. it is far more likely to get good open rates. For us, a blog I wrote many years ago on “The top 52 books that I most often recommend” remains one of our most viewed and downloaded blogs of all time. (Which reminds me it definitely needs updating and/or an additional 52 added to the list!)
So is this blog title just clickbait to prove my point? No, not at all. It is actually the result of a study of multiple such lists.
All of the training we do is tailormade to suit the company that has requested it. Recently I was asked to work with a team of young sales professionals to develop and grow their sales and leadership skills over several months. I thought it would be interesting to get a line in the sand with where they saw themselves in terms of their current skill set.
One of the exercises was to list all the qualities they saw in great leaders and great salespeople and then to rate themselves against the qualities that they believed made for exceptional leadership and sales. As part of my research I googled around the search phrases and came up with multiple lists from recruitment agencies through to industry-leading organisations, training specialists and research organisations. The search that intrigued me was around the skill set and qualities of effective salespeople.
Not only were there copious lists, but I was surprised to see that they contradicted each other in what qualities were desirable. In more than 15 different lists and more than 200 different qualities, one quality was explicitly consistent across more than 80 per cent of the lists and implied in the remaining 20 per cent.
It is not an earth-shattering or unexpected revelation and yet it is consistently the one quality so many sales reps struggle with. Rather than just tell the team, I decided to show them through a practical application.
I start the training session with one of my favourite activities. It spans 12 minutes and has three parts to it. The first part lasts one minute.
The second part lasts seven minutes. Participants are given a clear set of instructions. I record myself giving the instructions. I also record myself reminding the group of the end goal and that they are on step two of three every minute during stage two — repeating the instructions clearly. I then pause proceedings and ask what the team has learned so far.
There are many applicable lessons from the activity and I write them all down. I then ask what the end goal of the exercise is and how many stages there are. Most people cannot answer or they smile and realise I have been saying it quite a lot. I ask how many times they heard me repeat the instructions. Usually people say two to three times.
No one believes it is more than seven times. I play them each recording. The team oscillates between laughter, embarrassed glances and utter disbelief at the stark realisation that they just did not hear. They heard the talking but did not actually stop to listen.
And there it is — the top quality that the best salespeople practise is “listening”. Being fully present, totally engaged and attentive to another human being is one of the greatest gifts we can give them. Are you giving the gift of being present and listening to your team and clients?