What companies look for when recruiting a new sales representative are the characteristics that give you a successful sales career. If you have been hired to be part of a sales team, it's probably because your manager can perceive that you have these attributes, at least to some degree. Your manager's main challenge to help you develop them to their full potential. Let's examine each of them in more detail.

1. Professionalism
Because of the high-ticket products and services we sell, our clients expect and deserve to work with men and women who are professional, in regard to their demeanor, their wealth of relevant knowledge, and their ability to manage complex projects efficiently and effectively. Professionalism also assumes well-honed organizational skills that make all contacts with the client a satisfying experience rather than an annoyance. What else distinguishes a professional from an amateur?

2. Commitment
If you are selling a product, your client expects you to be committed to delivering the highest value possible, as defined by their requirements. If you are selling a service, your client expects you to be as interested, even as passionate, about getting their job completed on time and on budget as they are themselves. Commitment to your company is also essential to your success, as again and again your current and potential clients ask you, "Why should I choose your firm over one of your competitors?"

You must focus on providing a succinct but persuasive answer that question. Finally, you have to be committed to your own success--committed enough to be highly disciplined in your investment of time, energy, training, and other resources to your own ongoing development. The committed keep growing.

3. Charisma
You may believe that personal magnetism is a gift you may or may not be born with, not a skill you can develop. Charisma, however, is a competence that all sales professionals need, and most are able to learn. It is that seamless combination of vision, empathy, self-confidence, enthusiasm, optimism, and focus that often makes the different between closing a sale and closing a door--right in your own face. It involves the consistent ability to rapport instantly and maintain it subconsciously so that you and your client are never adversarial, but on the same side. Yet if your charisma comes across as contrived or artificial, it will do more harm than good.

4. Work ethic
Anyone who believes that success in sales is mainly good luck should remember the famous words of golfing great Lee Trevino, "It's amazing! The more I practice, the luckier I get." Developing and maintaining a good work ethic means that you develop efficient and effective work habits and then stick with them day in and day out. This includes a regular schedule, standard operating procedures for the repetitive tasks you must perform, a simple but effective record-keeping system, and the self-discipline to keep going no matter what. You recognize that your success is not dependent just on the number of hours you work, but on how much of that time you channel toward your objectives.

5. Desire
First, ask yourself, "What do I really want in my sales career?" Once you have established a definite, satisfying, and enthusiasm-inducing answer, keep that goal at the forefront of your thinking all the time. Second, you must ask, "What do I really want for my client?" This second goal should remain your priority in your relationship with the client. That's what is known as "Customer Focus": meeting or exceeding the client's needs and expectations the first time and every time. The answers to these two questions should never be in conflict, but complementary. Desire is seldom a personality trait, so much as it is a developed skill. You think what you focus on, and you become what you think.

6. Attitude
As Zig Ziglar says, "It's your attitude, much more than your aptitude, that determines your altitude." Are you an optimist or a pessimist? Are you enthusiastic or lethargic. Do you look at the problems or the possibilities? Once more, contrary to those who say to themselves and to anyone else who will listen, "That's just the way I am," and "I can never seem to overcome this personality flaw I have," the right attitude is something we can develop, improve, and fine tune. Your mind will believe whatever you tell it about yourself. Why not choose to program it for success?

7. Creativity
If you are wondering what distinguishes you from one of your competitors, consider this: to the client your two companies may be indistinguishable, you may both be selling a superior product or service, and each of you may be delivering your presentation and maintaining contact in a truly professional manner. Your creativity might well become the sole differentiator that makes you stand out from the dozen cookie-cutter sales representatives your client has encountered. It may be a remarkable turn of phrase, a humorous leave behind, or an unforgettable story. What ever it is, creativity can easily become a factor between gaining an order and losing one. Creativity can be learned, developed, and enhanced.

8. Resilience
Anyone who has been in sales for very long has felt the pain of losing a close one. You may have invested many hours, days, or even weeks developing a relationship, gaining an opportunity to make a proposal, and earning your clients loyalty. Then the floor drops out, and you find the order has gone to a competitor or has been postponed indefinitely. Your ability on such occasions to bounce back not only to where you were before, but having gained from the experience, is one of the essential keys to sales success. If you are able to learn something from each loss and then put it behind you, your next opportunity has a higher likelihood for winning.

9. Flexibility
Every sales professional knows that success in selling is not simply a matter of following a checklist of do's and don'ts. You have to learn how to be flexible. In other words, you must develop an outstanding ability to read the particular needs, preferences, and personal idiosyncrasies of your client, and then tailor your interaction, presentation, and closing tactics to custom-fit that client. Employing a "one-size-fits-all," learned-by-rote sales system is one of the quickest ways you can find to convince your client that they don't matter to you.

10. Integrate all of these
Of course, each one of these has a rightful claim to your attention as important in and of itself. The challenge you face is to integrate all of these into your personality as a sales professional to the extent that they are convincingly natural. Only experience--that is, recognizing and reinforcing your successful efforts while identifying and correcting your flops--can enable you to blend all of these characteristics into an outstanding sales persona that nevertheless is really you.

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About the Author

Copyright ©2006 Steve Singleton

Steve Singleton is a communications coodinator and corporate trainer for a Fortune 500 company and a former editor, editor, reporter, college instructor, and public relations consultant. His TeleprompterPlans.com has plans for building a teleprompter and resources for video marketing, podcasting, and vlogging.