Top Business to Business Salespeople:

Are Competent Problem Solvers

They use creative questioning to provoke critical thinking. They listen intently to customer responses, confirm their needs and help the customer visualize the potential impact and value their solution will have on the organization.

Continuously Focus on the Customer

Highly successful sales people recognize that the customer drives the relationship. They see things from the customer’s viewpoint in balance with their own organization’s requirements. They are diligent in calculating the financial benefit of the solution they recommend to ensure the customer’s acceptance of the value being offered. They build relationships with a cross section of key players by understanding what drives them and how they make buying decisions. Top Performing salespeople help customers succeed both professionally and personally.

Develop Skills Mastery

Superior salespeople are proficient and comfortable interacting within all levels of a customer’s organization. They practice relentlessly and continually ask for balanced feedback from their coaches on how to communicate and interact.

They ask their managers and fellow salespeople to work with them, knowing that feedback is the basis for skills mastery. And perhaps most importantly, superior salespeople ‘teach’ whenever opportunities present themselves. They know that by providing insight and help to their less experienced sales professionals and colleagues, that enhances and deepens their own knowledge.

Understand the Importance of Value

They communicate value by their in-depth understanding of the customer’s business and by their compelling product knowledge. They are strategic orchestrators, recognizing that superior value arises through the integration of all the resources the organization can bear on the customer’s business issues or challenges.

Are Process Centered

Superior Sales Professionals follow a sales process. They understand all of the key events and milestones in the sales cycle that leads to the final sale. They have learned not to focus on the end results right away, but on each progressive step in the sales cycle. They avail themselves of all the skills and tools to help them transition from one milestone to the next, and they know when and how to orchestrate management and other team members in order to move the process forward.

Measure Their Progress

Successful salespeople know that what gets measured has a higher probability of getting done, and so they welcome both results and measures activity as a guide. They see process, activity, and results metrics as tools. They recognize that tracking progress provides them with the feedback needed to adjust their course along the way to achieving their goals.