8 habits of a successful salesperson

Daria Olech

2023-02-20

The first place is the most crucial position in sales. If you want to be a successful salesperson and be the winner, you must develop good habits. How to do it? Which one of the habits deserves your attention? Read our article and get more information.

What does it mean to be a successful salesperson?

Some sales reps believe that 90% of the opinions about products are molded within the first six minutes of a conversation. Given this fact, how is it possible to be a successful salesperson and arouse your client’s interest? Everyday work in sales teams is not an easy task.

Nowadays, sales reps have to face many challenges. Sales managers demand more than sales analysis reports, typing sales data into a system, contacts with clients, and presentations of advantages of products or services.

A good salesperson is an expert who sees the importance of customer experience and knows how to identify customer needs. The sales rep has vast knowledge about the offer and knows which product or service is the best option for a given client. Undoubtedly, an efficient salesperson is an authority for customers, but what are their other features?

Who is a present-day successful salesperson?

A present-day salesperson is an expert and specialist who has at least basic psychological knowledge and knows how to maintain good relations with clients. A good sales rep is aware that building trust with clients is essential and affects the entire sales process.

How can sales teams be efficient? Sales reps should listen to their clients, ask open questions, and seek solutions. There are different types of customer needs, and the role of salespeople is to discover them. By identifying customer needs, sales reps can find a product or service that will be suitable for clients. There are numerous ways to do that – conducting focus groups, searching the information on social media, or meetings with customers.

If salespeople need arguments to convince clients, they use extra information, sales data analysis, helpful sales reports, or show the results of the implementation of a product or service.

If a company has a good sales strategy and modern tools such as a CRM system (CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management), it is easier for sales teams to achieve their goals.

What is customer relationship management (CRM)?

Customer relationship management is a technology that helps manage interactions with existing customers and potential clients. A CRM system contains a set of tools that are useful in the everyday work of sales teams and marketing teams. It is not a perfect tool, but a good sales rep knows how to use its advantages, improve the sales cycle, and reach expected sales targets.

However, present-day salespeople not only use technology but also improve their skills and develop good habits.

What is a habit?

According to the “American Journal of Psychology“, a habit is a settled tendency, the usual manner of behavior, way of thinking, or expressing emotions. You can develop habits by repeating actions.

How can you relate this to the work of a sales team? Salespeople can learn new sales activities that help them better perform their duties. It is essential to have effective sales reps in a sales team because they ensure more revenue.

Do you know what 8 habits you need to develop?

8 habits of a successful salesperson

1. Always do the research.

If you review the overall sales process, you need to think about its many aspects. One of the most important elements of the sales process is doing research about your clients. You need to find out information about their companies, problems, and successes.

Everything you need is on the Internet – check the information about your customers’ competitors, and industry, and think about what to expect. Definitely do market research. Maybe you can read about trends that will affect your client’s business. Everything you will find gives you valuable insights into your customer’s obstacles.

Moreover, preparation is helpful in anticipating customer questions. Planning is necessary and can directly affect your sales effectiveness in the future.

If your sales team uses the CRM system, store the most important customer data there. You never know when historical data can be useful.

2. Set clear and time-based goals.

Undoubtedly, your sales team has sales metrics and goals set up by a sales manager. Monitoring sales performance and revealing results to members of your team can motivate them to work in a more effective way.

It is obvious that you do your best to improve sales team performance, however, do not forget that the goals should follow the SMART principle.

SMART is an acronym for the words: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-based. If you check weekly sales reports and track the sales pipeline, consider whether you are bound to achieve your goals.

3. Develop your skills.

Do you think you know how to talk to your clients? Do you know how to use sales data analysis to be more successful? What is the significance of customer feedback and how can it be helpful? If you are certain that you are an expert who knows all these answers – that is great! You have in-depth knowledge about many areas of sales activities.

However, do not rest on your laurels.

It is great that you know your company’s sales strategy, the level of quarterly sales, or the average deal size, but remember to broaden your horizons.

Being open-minded is a good way not to miss the newest sales trends and sales opportunities. However, develop your skills not only in this area. Read something more than the annual revenue report. You should be interested in articles and books about different topics that can inspire and motivate you.

Take part in interesting courses and put theory into practice. Think about what can be helpful in your everyday work and what can affect the future revenue of your company.

4. Build relations and appreciate the idea of networking.

If you want to generate more leads, expand your network, and take care of customer experience. Understanding customer needs and preparing an offer tailored to them can be profitable. Practice active listening because it is very valuable – you can collect meaningful insights, build stronger relationships, and gain information that can be useful in the future.

Clients want to make fact-driven decisions. They expect that you deliver them the answers that they look for. Customer satisfaction can come from the way you deal with problems and try to find the best solution.

Remember that a content client is more likely to give you contact to other potential customers. Never close a deal without asking for a new lead.

Do not forget to be present on social media and build your personal brand. You are the expert who has extensive knowledge about the offer. Take part in webinars organized by your company and be a specialist who can describe the advantages of products and services.

The sales industry is something you should be familiar with. Be an active participant in business events that take place in your city. Do not miss opportunities. You can meet new people there and gain new loyal customers.

5. Analyze sales data and your sales effectiveness.

As we have mentioned, the CRM system is a modern sales analysis tool that can help you know the details of your sales process. It is a customer base but also has many essential sales data that it is good to know. High-performing sales reps follow sales strategies and follow the stage of every deal in the sales pipeline.

Sales strategies reveal the actual sales performance and the sales forecasts. They contain sales reports that tell a lot about the effectiveness of work and the commitment of employees. You can analyze your work by reading the details in the documents.

Examples of sales reports that can be helpful:

• sales call report – this kind of report can include the number of unanswered calls, number of answered calls, or total number of calls,
• daily sales report – it tracks your daily sales operations and can include information about your conversation with clients, or sent e-mails,
• weekly sales report – this kind of report can include information about the number of contacts, number of appointments, number of closed deals, or lead conversion ratio,
• monthly sales report – it can contain the number of scheduled meetings, the length of the sales cycle, sales volume, or the number of deals at each stage of the sales pipeline.

Why is to good to be familiar with daily sales reports, monthly sales reports, or sales call reports? The sales analysis report can give you the real picture of your work. Thanks to sales data analysis, you can work more effectively by eliminating unnecessary sales activities.

Sales reps that want to be successful must monitor sales metrics, and know how to draw conclusions if they lose a customer. A lost deals analysis report is a document that should be also relevant for you.

6. Always send follow-up e-mails.

The CRM system is your friend when it comes to sales data and information about your customers. Use it wisely to maintain relations with your customers and remember to send them follow-up e-mails after meetings.

Obviously, it is not easy to remember every customer when you have to juggle a thousand different tasks at the same time. However, you should be a reliable person – if you promise a customer that you will send a message with a brief summary, do it. Your customer needs to cooperate with a trustworthy expert.

Why is it also important to send follow-up e-mails? You are certain that you and your customer have the same information about the product or service.

7. Exchange the experience with other sales reps.

It is good that you know recent sales trends, attend events, and read sales reports. However, it can be not enough to be a successful salesperson. Do not forget about your sales team and bear in mind that you should be a team player. Help your colleagues and do not be afraid to ask for help if you need it.

Do you work with a high-performing sales rep that you admire? Ask about their good practices in the sales process. Maybe their sales effectiveness stems from different daily routines or they draw different conclusions from sales analysis reports than you. As a result, they are able to develop new skills.

Maintain relationships with sales reps from other companies – it is good to know how your competitors work and what kind of technology they use to increase their sales revenue.

8. Relax and set a boundary between your work and private life.

Recently, the term work-life balance has been widely discussed. The reason for that is very simple – stressed and overworked employees are not useful for companies. You will not rest if you still think about your tasks and sales performance.

Sending e-mails, preparing offers, analysis of sales reports, and making important phone calls – you should not spend your whole day working. The sales process in your company should be well-organized and allow you to make use of your free time.

Take care of your body and mind. Choose activities that are different from your tasks at work. Take up new hobbies and find interesting sports that will help you forget about sales targets, sales analysis, and customer surveys.

The more relaxed you are, the more creative you are at work.

What are the advantages of good habits?

You have already known the habits of a successful salesperson. If you put theory into practice your mind will accustom to new activities and you will do things automatically.

How can developing new habits affect your effectiveness in the sales process?

• You can organize your day of work, set priorities and use your customer base more effectively. Better organization will improve the whole sales process.
• The sales call report, lead response time report, average deal size report, or churned customers report are the names of documents that will be well-known to you. They allow you to see the most important patterns that are wise to follow. If you know what you are good at, you can apply this to the whole sales cycle.

• If you take care of clients and have insights from customer needs analysis, you build relations that can be valuable in the future, and lead to expanding your network. Moreover, you can convey information about products to relevant stakeholders in your company, and contribute to developing better goods.
• Being creative, innovative, and open-minded about new technologies will motivate you and give you the extra strength to develop your career. You will avoid being burnt out.

Get to know the effective ways to develop good habits of successful salesperson

You can be very eager to develop new habits, but putting theory into practice can be difficult. How to do it effectively?

• Think about what you want to achieve and define your goal.
• Start with small steps, they are the most important. It is better to set several small habits at the beginning instead of having a lot of difficult ones. Be realistic.
• Planning your day, choose fixed hours to contact your customers.
• Create your list of reminders on the phone, and use them in your CRM system as well. In that case, you will not miss an important message from your client.

• Create a long-term plan that includes the sales strategy, and look at sales operations from a broader perspective.
• Check whether you make progress and note if you feel that you do well.

According to different psychologists, it takes from 21 to 66 days to be sure that you succeed in developing habits. Your success depends on many individual factors. Determination, being observant and perceiving positive changes, and being ready to change your way of thinking.

You should be more open-minded and look for new technological tools that help you work more effectively. One of them is a sales enablement app from Salesbook.

Check how Salesbook can help you develop new habits

As we have mentioned, it is good to gather information about your customers and use the CRM system to store it. However, if your company uses its old version, you may not have all meaningful sales data.

The sales enablement app from Salesbook will help you gather important sales data and organize the sales process. It supports the CRM system, therefore, it collects data for you and sends them automatically to your system. You do not have to make notes and take documents with you when you go to a meeting.

Salesbook will help you collect sales data

Meetings with customers can be very chaotic. You focus on talking about your company, presenting an offer, and choosing the best option for your client. If you have a tablet with the app from Salesbook, you can use the Calculator and present the personalized offer.

It is very simple – you listen to your customer and just tick the right brackets. Salesbook will automatically generate the personalized offer and your CRM system will get this information at the same time.

You do not have to remember about writing down all the important details, Salesbook will do it for you. Therefore, sales automation is helpful in developing habits and it can increase your sales effectiveness by up to 60%.

Sales analysis report and other automated reports

Sales reporting is crucial because it tells a lot about sales processes and reveals if a sales team is on the right track. You know how it is important for sales managers to keep an eye on every detail and that they require precise sales analysis reports.

If you use Salesbook, you do not have to type information into the system and do sales analysis reports by yourself.

Salesbook will provide you with a sales analysis report, churned customers report, and any other document that you need, for example, a revenue report, average deal size report, or lost deals analysis report.

You want to download a given sales report? Simply click the tab Reports and find the right document. For example, you can find information about meetings with clients, their effectiveness, frequency, and statuses.

Thanks to sales reports, you can choose the best way of presenting the offer and plan more effective meetings. Moreover, you know how long it takes for you to move a lead in the sales pipeline. You can monitor your sales volume over different periods of time.

If you are more curious and see the sales analysis from a broader perspective, you can know the customer acquisition cost or customer lifetime value.

Automated follow-up e-mails

You do the market research, you know your customer needs, and want to maintain good relations with your client. Thanks to Salesbook, you do not have to write long summaries after meetings. The important sales data and the result of your customer needs analysis are in the system. Everything you need to do is send an automated follow-up e-mail.

Useful reminders that help you plan your day

Salesbook can support you and your sales team not only by sales analysis reports. Every sales rep can use a simple panel with leads, sales opportunities, and their statuses.

Every piece of information is presented in a clear way, therefore, you always know the length of the sales cycle. You see the sales volume and the sources of the leads.

The lead is organized in a way that makes your everyday work easier. You add the most important information, take notes, add photos of products, assign tasks, and set reminders.

If you want to develop a habit of working regularly, you can add new tasks and send a list of them to your e-mail.

Try the app from Salesbook and be a successful salesperson

Salesbook is an innovative sales platform and sales analysis tool that will help you automate your work and develop new habits of a successful salesperson.

Check Salesbook and its abilities. Try the free demo.