Top 10 Habits of Highly Successful Salespeople

Rob  0:05
Welcome back, everybody to The Slow Pitch. And today we’re going to be talking about the Habits of Highly Successful salespeople, what you’re going to find is that if you know highly successful salespeople, you’re going to be listening to this thinking, yep, yep, yep, these are the things that they do. These are the things that they say, these are the things that they do, you’re going to listen to this list, and you’re going to realize, Oh, these are the things I might be missing. Let’s get started.

V/O   0:27
This is The Slow Pitch Podcast.

Rob   0:31
Alright, so this is obviously not every single detail of what a successful salesperson does. However, we’re gonna go through quite a few bullet points here that you’re going to find, I think are a little thought provoking. And if you haven’t done some of these, you’re going to want to start to figure out how to integrate them into the into your day. So the first item is quite simply, successful salespeople will focus only on what they can control. So they only worry about the things that they know that they can control, they cannot control certain things in the relationship that they’re building, right?

So when you first make a phone call to somebody, and it’s cold, you can’t control their reaction, you can only control your reaction, not theirs. So if you have a bad call, your choice is Do you slump over and think why am I doing this? This is ridiculous, I can’t do this anymore? Or do you say, alright, let’s just one more call big deal. They didn’t want to, they didn’t want to talk to me anyway, that’s okay. Like this is this is how you get through things. It’s one more call, before you get to somebody that actually is interested, you got to find that you’re hunting for these folks, right?

That’s if you’re cold calling, that’s the same thing all the way through their whole sales process. Their goal is to find people that are not interested, that’s kind of what you have to think about. So focus on the things that you can control, and other things you can’t control. So the things that you can control as a really good salesperson, is in your process of interviewing your potential buyer, are you getting the right amount of pain?

Are you finding the problems that they’re running into getting to know their problems? And then understanding it enough to be able to say, okay, I get it, and that they can understand that you get it as well? Are you also looking at it and saying, Hey, I understand who their personality is? Or what their personality is? Are they high D? Are they an s are they a see all those things that feed into how you’re going to deal with that other individual or speak to that other individual? Those are the things that are going to be drivers that you can control, knowing whether or not you understand their personalities, or if you don’t understand those personalities or know who their personality is. That’s where you’re going to run into whether or not you can control it or not.

Right, you can control that you cannot control what their personality is. But what you can control is learning what their personality is. And knowing how to deal with them. Underneath as things of what you can control is also how do you explore more pain. So we already went through pain. But now as I’ve said before, you know, when they give you a point that they’re running into problems with they’re trying to fix whatever it is.

And then you dig a little deeper Oh, there’s other things underneath here that I didn’t realize that’s the real pain that they’re running into. And the more personal pain that you get into the better, right. So the other piece of that is, is getting to know who the decision makers are. So exploring that piece, you can control that you can control whether or not you know who the decision maker is or not, right?

Because if you don’t ask the question, and you don’t dig in, and you don’t push back, when they say there is nobody else here, then you’re not controlling that relationship, you’re not controlling that conversation. You’re also filling your own pipeline. What I mean by that is, knowing that your pipeline is full, you’re going to act differently than if your pipeline is empty. So you what you can control is how much you put into that pipeline. Is it quality? Or is it quantity? It really should be quality? Not quantity? Is your pipeline full is important? Yes.

Is it full of good quality leads? That’s even better, right? And the last thing that I would just highlight and focusing on what you can control is knowing your next step. So when you walk out of a meeting or get done with a phone call, or whatever, that’s step by B, do you know what your next step is? Are you walking out going? I have no idea what my next step is. I had a call the other day where we finished the phone call. And before I hung up, I said, you know, I don’t even understand what we’re we’re at what are we doing next? Like, am I should I call you back or not call you back?

Because that was kind of in my head. I’m like, this conversation went all over the place, there was an eye, right? So the person went all over the place. I couldn’t tell if they were serious, there was not a lot of pain. So I wanted to push back and say, Hey, I don’t even know what we’re doing here. Like, why are we even here? And I found out in that conversation, there’s really not enough pain for them to continue this conversation. And we just, we just shelved it. And I said, Hey, listen, if you wouldn’t mind, there’s a couple of options here.

One is I can put you on an email distribution. So you can kind of keep in touch and understand what we’re doing. Or I can reach back out to you and let’s say three months, or I could reach back out to you in six months or I could reach back out to you in 12 months does any one of those makes sense? And they go well, why don’t you reach back in six months? And I said well, okay, why six months? Because now I want to know what’s what’s happening in six months. So you start to find out are they just putting you off six months because six months is a long time. Right, if it was pressing, that would be a different issue.

So knowing your next step becomes very, very important. All right, next point of a highly successful salesperson, to me is doing what’s important, and not what’s busy. So it’s hard because when you’re in sales, you think you’re doing all the right things. Well, you never know where this leads gonna bring me or you never know that person is going to want to call me back or blah, blah, blah, blah, okay, yeah, that’s all fine.

But doing what’s important is there’s a subtle difference. Important stuff during your sales time is stuff like networking, and prospecting and cold calling and asking for referrals and building relationships with referral partners, and all of that kind of stuff. The things that are not important surfing the internet researching when you should be calling people, you know, if you’re researching leads at two o’clock in the afternoon, is that the right time?

Or should you be calling those leads at two o’clock in the afternoon, and when you should be researching those is seven in the morning, or, you know, 630 at night or sometime when they’re not in there, you’ll know what your prospect is doing at a specific time. Do they get in early? And is that the best time to call them? Do they work late is that the best time to call them we did an episode not too long ago about when’s the best time to call and yes, anytime is the best time to call.

It was ways to find when is the right time based on when incoming leads are already coming to you based on your Google Analytics. So start to use some analytics to figure out when you should be calling. But during that time that you’re calling, you should not be doing things like doing emails and reading and learning and all that stuff is done in your own time, essentially, right, that’s time when they’re not in the office or when they’re not taking calls. That’s when you should be doing that.

The next item is keeping an eye on the pipeline. I know I mentioned pipeline earlier. But you should be keeping an eye on the pipeline. To me, this is probably the most important thing on this list. Ignore everything else in a sense. Now I don’t say just like ignore everything that you’re having to do. But like this becomes the most important thing. Your pipeline is your lifeline.

Imagine going out on a boat and not bringing a lifejacket that’s kind of the same type of thing, right? You don’t you don’t do that unless you just don’t care. And if you don’t care, fine, ignore your pipeline at your own risk. The other thing I want you to keep in mind is getting the sale is less important than keeping your pipeline full. In other words, if you’re going to do something in your conversations, it’s about working them through the next step on purpose, or eliminating them getting the sale becomes secondary to keeping them moving forward in the pipeline.

That doesn’t mean if they slow down enough that and then start having conversations where they shouldn’t belong there that you shouldn’t push them out, push them out if they don’t belong. But getting that sale becomes secondary to keeping your pipeline in order and keeping people moving forward in the pipeline, you always have to kind of come from the mindset of that you don’t really need that sale, you need to come from the mindset of I’ve got so much stuff going on in my pipeline, that it doesn’t matter if this closes it or not.

That’s how you have to come across. And you have to put yourself in that position. The only way you can put yourself in that position is by keeping your pipeline full. Hey, let me stop this for a second here. Just a second, I just want to say that. First of all, I appreciate everybody listening. But second, if you have something that you’ve found very helpful in this episode, that you would like us to dig into more, tweet us, let me know what it is that you liked about this episode? Or is there something that you want to just to dig into a little bit more on this particular episode?

We would love the feedback, and we’ll be able to use that information in future episodes. We appreciate it. Now back to the show. All right. We’ve also heard about these multimillionaires who have become millionaires and then lost everything. And what does that mean in relation to sales? Well, I think what’s important to understand is that in your sales process, and this is the next bullet point, you have to remember that you can really pretty much lose everything that you’ve done. And that’s okay, you can lose every sale, that’s potential. And that’s okay.

Because you can always refill and continue to go after more to get it into your pipeline, what you need to do is put less pressure on yourself and focus more on what matters and what matters is your pipeline and the actions that you take every day to bring people into that pipeline, and move them forward through that pipeline. So focusing on what matters is what becomes very, very important. The next item is really, to me insist as much as possible on meeting in person, whether that’s virtually or physically.

Now, here’s what I mean, the more that you can do this in person, physically your sales process, the better it increases your odds of getting the project, getting the job getting the sale, you’ll be liked more, you’ll be able to figure out their personality a little bit better, they’ll feel a little more comfortable. The one thing that you do have to do is keep in mind, you don’t want to waste your time by going to these in person meetings, be strategic in the way that you approach your meetings in person. And when you do that, don’t go just go to a place to network and to talk to the people that are potential buyers and all that kind of stuff.

Just because you feel like the in person is better. What I mean is be strategic in how you’re approaching and what you’re doing. While you’re in person, and only do the in person as you need to one thing that I think COVID has taught a lot of us is you can use Zoom and all the other online networking meeting platforms, you can use those to have several meetings back to back anywhere in the country all day long, every day.

And that gets you a lot of traction, a lot of mileage, if you will, right. But there’s something to be said about somebody coming to the place location, in person meeting in person, you have the ability to see the see the place, see the issues that are going on firsthand, it helps you put you in a better position. But you also get the ability to understand personalities, other actions and activities are going on behind the scenes, there’s a lot more stuff happening that you don’t even realize, if you’re not there in person.

However, if you cannot do a physically in person, kind of meeting, do a video or a zoom style meeting, that becomes your secondary as opposed to your in person, because it’ll also increase your odds over just a phone call next know what pains they have? And are they already working on solving that? What have they done? So we’ve kind of hit on pains a little bit already, right? But what have they already done?

How have they done this to help themselves and what have they done to it, what has it done to impact them, understanding what their pains are becomes really, really important. So I would almost put up there above everything else. But below, keeping your pipeline full is knowing what the pains that they have, and what they’re doing to solve their problem, and how much it’s costing them and how it’s impacting them personally, these are the things that you’re going to want to find out before you even try to present anything.

Because if you don’t know what their problems are, or you don’t, they don’t feel like you understand it very well, you will not get that job. The next item is referrals and relationships. So these are things that I think a lot of salespeople do very, very well. But But I think the really good ones are very strategic about how they have the referrals and their relationships set up one day nurture their relationships, they are very good at identifying who are the people that influence other people, people that know a lot of people, people that can sway groups of people like that, that they know that these good salespeople know who those individuals are in their list.

And their Rolodex, if you will, those individuals are the ones that they build a relationship with. And they nurture that incredibly well, they get the best use out of that out of those individuals. Because those individuals that they’re meeting was those relationships that they’ve built those other individuals that are the influencers, they recognize the value that the salesperson has, they recognize the value that the company that that person represents has, and they feel very comfortable referring the work to them. And it’s not because they feel like they have to it’s because they want to.

That’s how they build the relationship. It’s so that it becomes a conversation and it becomes a hey, I have somebody that just has this issue, can you just take care of it for me, it’s something that I can’t do. And they that’s how they revert over it’s it’s very simple, it’s seamless, almost. And that’s where they’re really good at building that relationship so that it’s so seamless. The last item I would have on my list is having a good plan. And then following the plan. The one thing that I feel like is far and away better than a lot of good salespeople do, that are out there that are the best is they have a solid plan.

They walk in every day with a plan. They know what they’re going to do, who they’re calling, where people are at any given day, right? They walk in with the plan, they walk in, they follow that plan every day. And they walk out every day with a plan for the next day. They also look at things and say, Alright, what’s my plan for this week? What is my plan for the month? What is my plan for the quarter? And what is my plan for the year.

And if they have to, if they will, if they’re really good, they probably have in the back of their head or somewhere what their plan is at the end of their decade, because they have a goal where they’re trying to get to. And the way that they get there is not by doing big grandiose things. It’s by doing those little steps along the way, that her daily. That’s how things get done so that you can get where you want to be in the long term. So having that plan is critical. And those excellent salespeople, the ones that are really, really successful.

That’s what they do. They have that plan. They follow that plan. And they walk it and talk it every day. These are the things that I look at as successful salespeople have that a lot of people don’t really have, they think they have something, but it’s not as developed and not as good as what it could or should be keeping in mind focusing on what’s what you can control, doing what’s important. Now what’s busy, you’re keeping an eye on your pipeline, you’re just kind of ignoring everything else.

But keeping that pipeline, making sure that it’s full, making sure that it’s quality, and making sure they’re moving forward through it, remembering that they have in the back of their head that hey, I could lose everything here but it’s okay because I get so many things going on. It’s okay. They meet in person as much as possible. They dig into pain and understanding what that is how it affects that individual and so forth.

They build relationships that just foster referrals and they have a plan and part of that plan is tracking what they’re doing tracking their progress towards the goal. And essentially, I hate to say this, but tracking a little bit on these things that are in this list. They track that as well. How many relationships have they fostered today, this week and so forth? How many times have they reviewed their pipeline?

How many times have they eliminated somebody in their pipeline? How many things have they gotten done? How many times have you gone networking? How many prospecting meetings have they’ve had those types of They’ve tracked those things, that’s how they’re successful because they’re keeping themselves accountable to their actions. So if you’re a little behind on sales, review this list and make sure that you understand each of these are very, very important. I hope that helps. And until next time, remember slow down and close more.

V/O   15:43
Thank you for listening to The Slow Pitch. Do you have a question about sales? Call or text your question to 608.708.SLOW that’s 608.788.7569. Or you can email them to Questions@TheSlowPitch.com. Slow Down and Close More?

Rob 16:33
Thanks, as always, for listening today. If you’d like this podcast, please subscribe and leave us a review. We really appreciate it. Follow us on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at The Slow Pitch. We were mixed today as always by Johnny Polakis and we were produced by High Gravity Studios. Music credits and other notes are in the show notes section on TheSlowPitch.com And we’ll be back with another episode soon.