What are the qualities of a high performing salesperson?

What Are the Most Important Qualities of a High-Performing Salesperson?

Great salespeople share many traits—but one stands above the rest.

In today’s Question of the Day, I quickly walk through several qualities often associated with high performers, but focus on the one that consistently separates the best from everyone else: the ability to be a problem solver.

In this episode, we cover:

• Key qualities commonly found in top-performing salespeople
• Why problem-solving is the skill that ties everything together
• How great salespeople think differently when facing challenges
• A breakdown of two high-performing salespeople from different industries and what makes them effective

If you’re trying to identify—or become—a top performer, this episode highlights the mindset and skill set that truly make the difference.

Have a Question? - Submit your questions to chrish@nexstarnetwork.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to the question of the day. Today's question is from Andy in Texas. And Andy asks, What qualities make the best salesperson? That's a great question. Thank you for asking that question. And I like where your head is at with this question. Because anytime I want to accomplish something, odds are somebody's already accomplished that. There's already a model to look at. I don't need to reinvent the wheel every time. And in this regard, to be a great salesperson, there's great salespeople out there. And you can look at those great salespeople and identify those as like, that's what success looks like. Stephen Covey says, begin with the end in mind. That's the end. That's what success looks like. And then I can work it backwards from there, like, okay, what are they doing? What are the steps they took to get to where they're at? And then I can execute those steps to eventually get to where they're at. Now there's a lot of skills we could talk about here. This could be a really long episode, but I'm going to focus on just one big skill here. There's a lot of other skills. There's skills like we could talk about communication, the ability to transfer information from one person to another, the ability to ask questions like good, open-ended questions. We could talk about people skills. So building that rapport between you and another, because people buy from people that they like. So are you likable? We could talk about appearance. That would tie into that as well, like what appearance would look like. We could talk about sales process and the ability to master and execute a sales process. We could talk about the ability of when I get pulled out of a sales process, how do I get back to a sales process? We could talk about product knowledge or technical knowledge. We could talk about business mindset, the ability to see the big picture. Um, these these are all things we could talk about, but I'm gonna focus on just one key thing. And that key thing is the ability to be a problem solver, the ability to be a problem solver. And I'm gonna give you two examples. Two examples from two different industries, and I want you to see if you can pick out the similarities between these two top salespeople. So the first example, this is from the automotive industry, and this person was number one in the nation selling their brand of new cars, number one in the nation, not the city, not the state, not the region, the the nation, number one in the nation. For reference, this person would sell on average 75 to 80 cars a month. Do the math on that, how many days are in a month, and and in their state, you don't sell cars on Sunday, and and so it's like a lot of cars every day, right? It's like four or five cars a day. For perspective, an average salesperson in the automotive industry sells 12 to 15 cars. Good is probably getting up into 20 cars, so he's doing four times that on average, right? And so I remember one particular instance when I was observing the salesperson, and he had worked with the customer, he had executed the process. And that's a funny thing. Everybody thought he had some like silver bullet, he did some match, I think. No, he just executed the process. That's what he did. He did it very quickly, very efficiently. He did it very well, but he was just executing the process. That was his secret. Um, but uh he he built this value with the customer, and the customer had some questions, customer had some objections, and he respectfully answered those questions and solved those problems to get the customer on board that that they wanted to move forward, right? Well, then he had another problem. He he needed to get a trade appraisal on a car that wasn't even there, uh, because that would be key to to moving this, right? And so he worked with his sales manager to devise a strategy where they actually ran out and they appraised the car where it was sitting, right? And so, so a little bit out of the ordinary, but they came up with a solution to that problem of the car wasn't here, right? And so that was a second problem he solved. And then he did all this. And the third problem was this was a used car, and and in their company, they had a center that it would go to. All used cars would go here because they would go through an inspection process, they'd get new tires, they would get oil changed, they'd get anything fixed on them, like all they would get reconditioned. The car hadn't actually returned from the reconditioning place yet. And so it was whatever place in line, it was probably about five days out. Well, we all know in sales that if we are to push something out, it may fall apart, right? And so we wanna we want to move things along quickly. And so you better believe he was on the phone with the reconditioning center, explaining how he had a customer. This customer wanted to move forward on this car, how we were doing the trade appraisal on this car, and and how we needed to move that car up in the line so that we could we could get it sold. So he was solving problems with the customer, solving problems with his manager, and solving problems with a third-party entity here. So just continually solving problems. This is above and beyond what the typical salesperson does, but he gets above and beyond results. Now, let me go into the second example here. So now that the second example comes from the HVAC industry. Now, this this guy, this guy is one of the top closers I've ever personally ridden along with. He closed on average every single month, month in and month out, he would close in the 80% range, somewhere in the 80s, right? And now to put that in perspective, too, I've I've worked with a lot of salespeople that have closed in the 80s or even the 90s. And a lot of times, not every time, but a lot of times when I dig into that, I start to find that maybe as a company we're not doing a good job flipping service calls over. So, really, the only replacement opportunities that are getting flipped are the ones that are like 40 years old and like dead, dead. Like they don't even make the parts anymore. Well, of course you're gonna close 80, 90%. But that wasn't the case with this guy. Okay, this company did a really good job flipping leads. He just did a really good job building value with those customers to sell. And so I'm riding along with this guy, and and we're riding out to our first call. And I'm not gonna lie, I was a bit nervous. Like, I'm not usually that nervous, but I was nervous with this guy because I I had looked at his numbers and I'm thinking to myself, what am I gonna tell Mr. 85% closing here? What am I gonna tell him? Right? Like, what kind of value am I gonna offer this guy? Had a little bit of imposter syndrome on that ride along. And we got there and I got to see his process, and it was amazing. And so he gets there and he works with the customer, and the customer is not completely sold on replacing their system yet, right? And so uh we we built value, built great rapport with the customer, but he wasn't sold there. He had questions, he had some objections, and and we worked with the customer on a next availability close. And eventually he got the customer to say yes. But he encountered, I'll bet you five, six, seven, eight no's just in that process. But he was respectful the whole way through. The customer didn't feel like they were high pressured, and and eventually we solved all the problems that the customer said, yes, we got the green light. Well, then the problem came that in that time that install spot filled, and so that spot wasn't available anymore. And so the salesperson then got on the phone with the sales manager, who is also the owner at this company, and he's working with them of how can we accommodate and get an install team to fill that spot? And so he's working with the manager, and the manager had started out like it ain't possible, it ain't gonna happen. But he keeps throwing out ideas like, what if we did this? What if we did that? What if we move this here, that, that, that like, and and he's and eventually they came up with a solution that everything was covered, everything was taken for, and we could still do that install that day. And so got the blessing from the owner and the sales manager to do that day. So here he solved the all the problems for the the salesperson or for the customer. He solved all the problems with the sales manager, the owner, and and now he finds out the equipment is not available from the vendor. So he went all this way, and the system is not even available. We couldn't even get it in the time frame that we needed it. So he called the vendor and he talked to whoever would listen, and he did the exact same thing. He started problem solving with them. He started going, what if we did this? What if we move this one here to this job and this one here? Like, and eventually they came to a solution where they could free up some equipment without affecting any other orders or installs, and and we solved that problem. And it went forward. And the customer got the installation, the customer was completely happy, right? So, so between those two examples, there, did you see it? Could you hear it? Could you identify what do those two high performers have in common? What are the qualities they have in common? It might be a bit annoying. Usually high-performing salespeople are a little bit annoying, respectfully annoying though, but they're problem solvers. They are not phased by the word no. They're not disrespectful either. They're not hard closers, they're not closing doors, they're not forcing anybody into anything, but they're unfazed by no. They know there's a path forward, they just gotta figure out what that path is. Because here's the reality. The reality is, this isn't just sales, this is all of us. If you take all of our titles away, we're all problem solvers. We get paid based on the number of problems we can solve, the size of the problems we can solve. That's how we get paid. The ability to figure it out is the greatest superpower you can have. Now, how do we find this person? Schedule a call with me. There's a lot more to this that we can go into. Schedule a call. Let's let's figure out how do we find that talent. Because typically, the salespeople that are applying to your jobs, good sales, these people are not looking for jobs, right? You have to go out and find these people. So let's discuss how we find those people. Let's discuss how we define the other qualities that we're looking for. Let's discuss how do we identify these qualities so we know this is one of those people. How do we align leaders and interviewers in our interview process that we can identify and find and bring these people? And I got one more specific strategy that no one else is doing to identify these great salespeople for hire. So we need to schedule a call and talk about all that. But the answer to your question what qualities make the best salesperson a problem solver? The ability to solve problems, the ability to figure it out. That's your greatest superpower. That's today's question of the day. If you're enjoying the question of the day, follow, share, give a rating question of the day is on major streaming platforms. If you have a question, reach out to me either on social media or email. Both are going to be listed below in the show description. Let's get your questions answered. And if you're a next star member, schedule a call with me. Let's get this addressed one-on-one. Let's help you find these kinds of sales candidates. We'll get very specific to your company and your situation. I'm Coach Chris. We'll see you tomorrow.