Qualities Of A Good Salesperson: In this world today we thrive on the production and manufacturing of goods and services to satisfy the needs of a prospective Customer. However, it is to enough as a producer to manufacture a product; you also need to sell such product as selling is the end product of production. This is why a Salesman is very important to every brand and organization as a salesman helps such brand in selling products, helping their customers make the right decisions, increasing their customers, retaining existing customers, influencing the buying decision of people and bringing in larger profits to the brand.
Thus, if you want your brand to thrive forward, gain new customers and rake in numerous sales as well as larger profits; you need a good salesman. However, getting a good salesman is not easy as it is not every salesman that can be categorized as a good salesman. To be categorized as a good salesman, you must display certain qualities which a good salesman should exhibit.
In case you are looking for a good salesman for your business or just want to have the knowledge of the qualities of a good Salesman, this Article shall assist by examining in detail the qualities which a good salesman must possess.
Who Is A Salesman?
Generally, Salesmanship according to Prof. Stephenson is the conscious effort on the part of the seller to induce a prospective buyer to purchase something that he has not really decided to buy, even if he had thought of it favourably. Also, according to Holtzclaw, Salesmanship is the power to persuade plenty people to pleasurably and permanently purchase at a profit.
Specifically, a Salesman is a person whose job involves the selling and promotion of commercial products and services in shops, store, companies, visiting location, or a remote location of work. A Salesman is primarily employed to sell, promote and influence the sale of goods and services.
I trust this definition of a Salesman is self explanatory as we all see salesmen all around us whenever we leave our house. Let’s therefore consider the qualities which a good salesman possesses.
10 Qualities Of A Good Salesperson
1. Honesty: A good salesperson exhibits integrity and honesty to employers and also to customers, as this earns them the trust and confidence of the customers thereby ensuring the customers continued patronage.
It happens that when you go to shop you may not want to go back to such shop if the salesman is deceitful or tried to cheat you. However, if the salesman was honest in their dealing with you, you will feel comfortable with them and when in need for similar services, you will patronize the same salesman.
From the above illustration, we can see that this quality of Honesty helps a salesman in gaining new customers as well retaining existing customers through winning the trust of customers and so therefore creating a long term business relationship with these customers.
2. Empathy: Empathy is literally the ability to understand and share the feelings of another person, and a good salesman must possess this important quality of empathy as empathy will help such a salesman to emotionally connect with other people and promote their products in a way that will emotionally connect with people, thereby naturally inducing them to buy such product as people often make market decision based on their feelings and not necessarily based on logic.
Having empathy towards customers often ensures a lasting seller-customer relationship. Additionally, a good salesman must possess and exhibit a high level of emotional intelligence.
3. Sociable: A good salesman should be sociable, whether you are an introvert or an extrovert, you need to be able to not only emotionally connect with customers, but also interact with them, making them feel comfortable around you, treat them nicely with your words, boost their ego through your speech and conversation with them, connect with them in a way that they will not only see in as a salesman, but also as a friend, this will therefore make them to feel obligated to patronize you and it will therefore establish many trusted customers.
4. Confidence: Confidence is an important quality of a good salesman, because as a salesman you have got to be confident in approaching and comfortably interacting with customers to develop friendship and a lasting customer as illustrated above.
You also need to be confident to gain new customers of your product. This occurs by understanding your product and the value it creates, making a customer believe that you care about their interest, need and problems and explaining as well as practically showing them how your product or service can solve this problem.
This confidence is contagious and it will make a customer patronize you and also want to buy more products. Instilling confidence in this manner to people about your products will effectively help you in gaining new customers and in the long run will establish these customers.
5. Good Listener: It’s not always about talking or orally selling your products to a customer, a good salesman must also be an active listener.
An active listener is a person who listens to another person and responds in a manner which will improve mutual understanding. Being an active listener is an essential quality of a Salesman because without this quality you are only marketing, but not selling your products.
This is so because to efficiently sell your products you need to identify the real need of a customer and match such need with a solution which meets the need of the customer.
Furthermore, demonstrating your active listening skills by hearing and understanding the challenges, concerns and needs of a customer will make you seem like a trusted person and will therefore lead to such a customer reposing confidence in you and adhering with your proposed solution to their concerns.
6. Drive: An important quality of a good salesman is their drive for success. A good salesman must exhibit the thoroughness, tenacity, persistence, determination to succeed or hunger for success, the ambition to set goals and the drive to achieve such set goals.
This quality is very important as the drive of a salesman largely contributes to the number of sales which they turn in at the end of the day, the progress of the company and the profit turnout which their employers generate from sale.
7. Desire to grow: A good salesman must exhibit the desire to improve themselves, learn, update their experience and grow through reading books and learning better practices which will make them a better salesman.
This desire to grow is what propels a salesman to developing new approaches to customers, new methods of marketing the product, gaining sales, and establishing customers as well as attaining success of both personal and work goals.
8. Likeability: An important quality of a good salesman is likeability as this is the quality which attracts new customers and glues the already existing customers. When a salesman is really likeable, trust sets in and will you be likely to close in deals and rake in lots of sales as your customers will not only patronize, but will also recommend their family and friends to patronize you, as they like you, feel comfortable with your personality and services and also have trust for you. So therefore, anytime any day they will always patronize and recommend other people to patronize you.
A Salesman may develop their likeability by showing empathy to customers, emotionally connecting with customers, actively interacting with customers, always smiling, looking approachable, being honest with customers, being dedicated to your job, being trustworthy, and implementing a positive approach to garnering sales.
9. Passion: Passion is the strong liking for your job and this is a fundamental quality which a good salesman must possess; as to be a salesman you should be very passionate about their job and role in the company. It is only this strong passion which drives such a salesman to achieve set marketing goals.
Passion about their role makes such a salesman happy while doing their job and it therefore drives such a salesman in devising new marketing strategies to achieve, interacting and building relationship in a bid to retain their services and effectively convince new people to patronize your services.
10. Communication skills: A good Salesman must possess the requisite inter personal and communication skills which will convince people to buy your products, network with customers thereby developing a good relationship with them, listen to their needs and propose solution, explain difficult concepts to customers, make customers feel comfortable around you and enjoy interacting with you.
Additionally, a good salesman must also possess the ability to multitask, effectively communicating with customers physically as well as virtually through send emails, responding to queries and keeping in touch over the phone.
In conclusion, it is worthy to note that these aforementioned qualities are essential and must be exhibited by a salesman for such a salesman to achieve their sale objectives and be regarded as a good salesman. This is so because it only takes your ability to constantly deliver at work and rake in unique marketing strategies and product sales to be to be regarded as a good salesman.
