What makes a salesperson successful?

Relationships = sales

Building and maintaining authentic relationships is difficult. I believe it comes naturally to some and can be challenging for others, but definitely something we can all improve upon; personally and professionally.

In sales and recruitment you’re constantly judged and measured on the amount of relationships you build. The pursuit of this naturally lends to the creation of disingenuous relationships built on rushed and agenda-filled conversations. I’ve always struggled with this concept myself, and feel I need the connection to be real in order to instigate and continue with the relationship. It’s a cliche but true, sales is all about relationships, yet some people think these can be superficial, transactional and fleeting, I don’t.

During the time I recruited sales people, I found the ones who experienced long-term success were those who made genuine connections with me, for example when they asked about my family, they meant it and when they recalled a personal fact about me at the next meeting, it wasn’t rehearsed. We’ve all met the alternative at some point, the person who swallowed a sales technique book and spends their time asking fake and forced questions, sometimes followed up with an equally or worse encounter where they flex more terrible sales tricks.

Hard work, hard work, hard work?

I’ve always attributed the magic of my sales and recruitment success to a combination of hard work, organisational skills and fruitful relationships. On reflection, I do still believe this to be true but, I would weight more on the relationships than the other two attributes. The reason for this is that most people can implement hard work and organisational skills with some discipline, however the fruitful relationships aspect, not so easy.

Forcing someone to forge meaningful connections with a commercial goal in mind is difficult, a lot of people lead too heavily with their commercial objective, ploughing through the meeting to close the deal and spending little to no time getting to know the other person. I believe that successful sales people are open and honest about their objectives up front, yet genuinely want to make the connection as much as the sale. And, if the sale doesn’t come into fruition, they’ll have enjoyed the experience anyway and learnt something valuable.

I can say that’s true for me, I always open a meeting by outlining my objectives and most importantly; what’s in it for them! This way, we’re all on the same page and can relax into the relationship building part without worrying what’s coming up.

The long game

Even if I invest a lot of time in a relationship and in the end it makes me little or no money (this happens a lot), I never feel annoyed. I value the things I’ve learnt from this person and try to make use of them immediately (I believe change needs to be acted on quickly or it won’t be at all). I also have faith that the relationship will eventuate into financial reward at some point, and it usually does. The true essence of this optimism is the fact that I believe in this person and they believe in me. It sounds cheesy, but it is the mutual respect that guarantees reward of some sort for both parties in the end.

An example of this is with a very successful sales and marketing leader who I am still in touch with. My colleague at the time Martina, and I were at a meeting one Friday morning when the LGBT marriage vote was passed. This was something close to the clients heart and she asked if it was ok to check the results at the start of the meeting. When the good news was announced it was a genuinely amazing moment which brought us all together.

One year later after keeping in touch, she approached me and asked me for a job for herself, I got her a very unique and complicated position at a pharmaceutical company; a process which involved us speaking every day for almost 6 months to secure. A year on, I recruited some roles in her team. We became very close through this time and celebrated the success with lots of catch ups over coffee, wine and dinner. The point of this story is, I didn’t actually have any financial gain from this client for one year, nor did she, yet we both made an effort to keep in touch as we had made this connection based on a memorable and emotional first meeting, and the fact we both mutually understood the commercial objectives we represented (and we enjoy each others company).

The value of a long term, mutually beneficial and mood enhancing relationship is the core of a successful sales person. If you read my LinkedIn recommendations I hope you’ll understand what I’m saying here. To me they read as genuine recommendations from people who I have spent a lot of time communicating with; relationships built on trust.

Fully charged

I approach every person with the view that there’s something to gain, something I learnt from my Dad who is a very successful sales person himself. Don’t get me wrong there are days when I don’t want to build connections and feel exhausted by the very thought of it, but that’s because it takes a lot of energy to invest in people like this.

Usually when I get like this and lose that enthusiasm I know I need some time off, recharge the batteries as my Dad would say. Absolutely essential for a high intensity sales role in which you apply 110% everyday, the batteries run out quickly – they also recharge quite quickly, only if you don’t let them run empty for too long. Top tip: take regular, short holidays – even a long weekend can do the trick.

So how does this all translate to teaching?

The truth is, I am still figuring this out.

I am investing in the students and trying to understand how to motivate them, whilst trying to earn their respect and ensuring every student makes progress, in every lesson. As neither party are seeking a commercial outcome, the goals are different yes. But, we do both have mutually beneficial ones, it’s just a bit harder to get them to see theirs all the time, but leave that one with me for now….

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