As always, this post is aimed at salespeople and business owners that have to sell as part of what they do.

Whatever your relationship with sales in your organization, it’s imperative that you work on these attributes to have the most sales success you can!

One of the things I often do when starting to work with salespeople and business owners is to ask them ‘what do you consider to be the top attributes of the most successful salespeople?’  It’s an interesting question and one that always sparks a lot of heated debate!

The attributes I mention in this series of articles aren’t necessarily in any order of importance, just ones that seem to get mentioned most often in the ‘debates’ and which are making the difference for the most successful recruiters in the current market.  It’s perhaps an opportune time to look at your own attributes in this area, or if you’re a manager how you’re developing these attributes in your team.

Essential Attribute No 1 – Confidence

Let’s start off with the most obvious one – Confidence.  I don’t expect this to be revolutionary to you – in fact if you weren’t aware of it, you probably wouldn’t have been in sales for very long!

However just because you ‘know’ it’s important, doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re getting the best from yourself in that area, nor your team for that matter.  Let me explain a little further…

Confidence is often transient and situational.

If you change what you’re doing (or what you expect others to do) in terms of the activity or the situation, you can have an impact on people’s confidence, either positively or negatively.

Some examples of things that could affect a salesperson’s confidence (and therefore their potential results)…

•    Moving from a ‘non-sales’ role into a sales role

•    A shift in focus from servicing existing clients to cold calling for new ones

•    Losing an existing client or piece of business

•    Inadequate training or motivation

•    Regular objections and rejection

•    Less figures on the board (and therefore money!)

•    Colleagues and other people’s opinions on the state of the market

There are many other examples of things that can affect your confidence levels – if you’ve realised your confidence has been ‘hit’ a little recently, contact me at www.andy-preston.com/ask-andy/ and I’ll send you some tips on building your confidence back up.

Andy’s Sales Tip – If your situation has changed recently, it’s really important to work on your confidence levels and get back to the top of your game.  You can go to www.andy-preston.com/ask-andy/ and ask for help on any specific queries…..

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