How to Think Like a Successful Salesperson

Learning how to think like a successful salesperson will not only optimize your professional success, but, it will also optimize your personal success. All too often, we mistakenly believe that a one-size-fits-all model is the way to achieve success in sales. The truth of the matter is that each and every single person that you come in contact with is unique and each sales approach that you use must be customized or tailored to the needs, wants, and problems that each person you come in contact with faces.

Selling is nothing more than moving others to think a bit differently or behave a bit differently; however, in order to do that successfully, you must determine each person’s needs, wants, and problems. You must know, regardless of the challenges that you face, that you have the capability of meeting each person’s needs, each person’s wants, and that you have the capability of solving each person’s problems. This is the first and the absolute most important step in learning how to think like a successful salesperson.

When learning how to think like a successful salesperson, you must approach the endeavor by thinking in terms of constructing a business. Many sales professionals think in terms of the sale and the sale only; however, if you move past the desire to simply make a sale and focus on building a business, you are equipping yourself for success. You need to think on a long-term basis and extend beyond that ONE sale. When you look at sales as a means to constructing a business, you will find that you are easily able to cultivate relationships with your leads. This, in turn, builds trust. When your leads trust you, they will listen to you. When your leads are listening, sales typically accumulate quickly.

The next step in learning how to think like a successful salesperson is to ensure that you look at each customer as a means of acquiring more customers. In essence, you will want to leverage every customer that you come in contact with in an effort to generate new leads and relationships. A relationship should initiate at first contact with a lead and continue throughout the duration of your business. Unfortunately, many sales professionals are so wrapped around getting a sale that they only focus on that. Once the sale is made, the customer that made it is then forgotten and the pursuit of the next sale ensues. If you do this, your business is doomed to failure. When learning how to think like a successful salesperson, you must look at each lead as the start of a relationship and the means to developing your business, as a whole.

Throughout history, there is a major mistake that all sales professionals have been making; that is, they focus more on talking than on listening. If you want to become a successful salesperson, it is imperative that you listen more than you speak. In taking this very important step, you will find that you are able to understand the needs of those that you speak to and that it is possible to come up with a solution. The goal is to accommodate your customers, not talk over them – with your own agenda. In sales, your priority should be the agenda of your customers – not your own agenda. If you place the customer’s agenda first, you will also be the first to make a sale!

The next step to learning how to think like a successful salesperson is to always view problems and challenges as opportunities for growth and success. If you face problems and challenges, it means that you possess value. You must use your intellect to see those problems and challenges as unique opportunities for you to grow and succeed in your field. If, at first you do not achieve any success in making a sale, you must look at the issue as an opportunity to get to “yes”. It does not mean that you have really failed. It only means that you have yet to find a successful way of getting to “yes”. When you are told “No” by a lead or a potential customer, it does not mean that the opportunity to make the sale is eliminated; it simply means that you must find a more creative approach. In taking this measure, you will find that it is easy to get your potential customers to a point where they want what you have to offer.

Gregg Swanson is a sales performance consultant and business coach and has authored several books and numerous articles on peak performance. Gregg specializes helping sales professionals develop mental strength for optimum sales performance.  You can pick-up your complementary report, “The Most Critical Step in Sales” by going HERE