A colleague of Dialexis recently asked for our professional opinion about what it takes to be a top sales performer. Since Dialexis has worked with many high performance salespeople throughout our own careers, we think we have a good answer to the question: What does it takes to be a top sales performer in the world of sales?
It’s a great question that every business owner or sales leader wants the easy answer to. Yet, the fact is this: there is no one simple answer on how one becomes a top performer. Instead, we believe success comes through each salesperson’s proprietary blend of skills that includes intelligence, work ethic, personality type and diligence – just to name a few.
How Do You Discover a Top Sales Performer?
Every top performer must discover their own way to the top, yet consistency alone is not enough. We have worked with many talented salespeople throughout the world of sales. However, talent in itself is not a reliable predictor of success, nor does it pave a path to success. Ask any trusted professional baseball scout or college football recruiter and they will show you notebooks full of names – these names represent talented individuals they won’t take a chance on for a laundry list of reasons, such as poor attitude, lack of durability, inabilities to receive coaching and lack of poise under pressure. Scouts have to look at the whole package when it comes to identifying a potential candidate for their team, and the obstacles that they see are likely to stand in the way of their team’s success – therefore, they are reluctant to take a chance on an athletic prospect. We think the same applications are true when it comes to predicting sales performance (here is a quick guide on how to set goals for sales reps too).
So now that we understood what we want to know, the next thing to ask is a hard puzzle to solve: What is the missing link? What may strip a person from their past self in the pursuit of becoming something better, leaving a skeleton of pride and failures? In our experiences, we have found that answer to be MINDSET! After 25 years of teaching and coaching salespeople into becoming top achievers in their industry, we have solved the riddle as to what blocks a person from becoming something superior than their past selves.
We relaxed this concept years ago – we must first speak to what drives a person with a deep discussion about developing a mindset that supports successful sales performance. We believe that having a clear understanding of how a person has come to see the world as they do may be the key to becoming successful in sales and even greater than that – in their own lives. This includes identifying the things that hold us back, which includes the goals that we aspire to and dream of in terms of living a happy and fulfilling life. The successful sales performer learns to focus on the future and use their desire to shape it to fuel daily sales activity. The sharper that focus is, the more it pulls a person towards achieving that goal at the highest possible level.
This explains why top sales performers come from all backgrounds and life experiences – there is no such thing as a born salesperson. Top performers are created and driven by discovering the best in themselves. And once they discover the best in themselves – nothing can stop them.
