What does it take to be a Star Salesperson?

First a reality check. Customers believe only 12% of the salespeople they engage are rated excellent, 23% are good, 38% average, and 27% poor.

So what does it take to be a STAR salesperson?

1.    Creating situational dominance

STAR salespeople show exceptional knowledge of their solution and customer's business and need and have the verbal perceptiveness at customers level. The customer should be convinced that you fully understand their problem and will start trusting you to propose the right solution.

2.    Know how to engage with the prospect at a personal level

STAR salespeople interconnect with the customer at a personal level. That could be sharing knowledge of areas of interest of the customer both inside and outside of the business and build a very strong rapport. The relationship should reach a stage where the customer feels comfortable to share confidential information and help you to win their business.

3.    Do everything it takes to understand customers business

STAR salespeople build a deep knowledge of customer's business. You could show industry information or share challenges you have seen in similar types of companies and how you solved them. Always remember the customer only knows their business while you and your company have most probably come across a lot more challenges in a similar type of company, which your product can address.

4.    Build strong product knowledge and applications in the industry

STAR salespeople show strong product knowledge as it applies to the industry. It’s not important to have very strong technical knowledge which could be complemented by presale engineers.

5.    Be actively seeking feedback and always be learning

STAR salespeople actively seek out a mentor and are continuously seeking feedback. This helps them learn from the sales intuition of their mentor and become a high-performance salesperson

6.    Being internally pessimistic

STAR salespeople are internally pessimist so are always validating the sales process from qualification to closure or walking away from an opportunity

By that, it means that in a complex sales situation lot can go wrong and so you should always be validating. The customer could lie, the competitive position could become very strong, the budget could be pulled by senior management to a higher strategic program with higher ROI, etc.

7.    Build a strong pipeline

STAR salespeople are always building a strong pipeline so that they are not forced to waste time on losing deals. You should always be building a strong pipeline and not be forced to waste time on losing deals because of not having other qualified opportunities.

8.   Develop a strong sales intuition

STAR salespeople build strong sales intuition which gets to build with experience and doing deep introspection of why you won or lost business and if lost, knowing what could have been done differently to have won the business.