I believe salespeople are a vital part of integrated marketing. It’s obvious that not all salespeople are created equal. Many factors – both internal and external – set someone up for success (or failure) in sales.
In his book Heavy Hitter I.T. Sales Strategy: Competitive Insights from Interviews with 1,000+ Key Information Technology Decision Makers, author Steve W. Martin, of USC’s Marshall School of Business, interviewed nearly 800 salespeople and sales leaders in addition to over 1,000 top salespeople from the world’s best companies. Here are the top six factors that separate the weak from the strong when it comes to sales performance:
- Verbal acuity, or the ability of a salesperson to communicate messages at a level that the customer can understand properly rather than below or above.
- Sales management impact, the relationship that the salesperson has with their leadership team and how the team is handled.
- The salesperson must have an achievement oriented personality, the intrinsic desire to achieve goals and frequently measure their goals against performance.
- Organization morale must be high as it affects the environment the salesperson is in and how it fosters them to succeed individually.
- Situational dominance is particularly important in B2B sales. This is strategy in which the salesperson becomes an expert in their field and the customer accepts the salesperson’s recommendations and therefore follows their advice.
- Finally, sales accountability or the desire to stack up within the organization and keep up with what is expected of the salesperson.
Read more about Martin’s findings on Harvard Business Review.
