Breaking Down the Top 7 Qualities of a Good Salesperson

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Do you want to boost your sales numbers? What are the qualities of a good salesperson?

There’s no perfect formula that guarantees you’ll make a sale every time, but there are qualities that can push you toward success. Effective salespeople cultivate these core characteristics that improve their chances of closing a sale.

Check out the seven qualities of a good salesperson and how to exhibit them on the job.

1. Confident

The first quality of a good salesperson is confidence. Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar says that, if you want to sell well, start from a rock-solid belief that your product will improve the customer’s life. You’ll transfer this strong belief to your lead during a pitch.

Then develop a strong sense of your value as a salesperson, recommends Ziglar. Be convinced that you have something to offer customers and that you’re there to help them. This lets you approach each pitch with confidence and bounce back from negative interactions.

You should also believe that the lead can afford the product or service, states Ziglar. Your confidence in their ability to purchase carries over to the lead, who will then also believe they can afford the product.

Ziglar writes that you must enter a selling situation with the expectation that it will go well. When you have faith in your chances and abilities and approach the lead with a positive attitude, you greatly increase the chance of a sale. Avoid allowing negative, defensive, or combative thoughts or behaviors to seep into your sale. This will ruin your chances of selling.

Ziglar adds that you can gain confidence in your abilities by becoming a better public speaker and an expert on your product. You also gain confidence by simply practicing selling. This confidence, in turn, will let you approach the next sale positively.

2. Persuasive

The common thread in Phil M. Jones’s Exactly What to Say advice for landing a sale is to say key phrases that target a subconscious tendency in the listener. Jones emphasizes that being persuasive triggers a reflexive response, without the listener actively analyzing and thinking about what you’ve said.

Using this tactic gets people to agree with you faster and avoids time they might otherwise spend being indecisive and critical. For example, when you tell someone, “Just imagine how happy you’ll be when you add this item to your collection,” the person automatically envisions this scenario and feels the emotion associated with it rather than focusing on a logical assessment of the purchase.

Research suggests that the subconscious brain is responsible for 95% of our decision-making when it comes to purchases, validating Jones’s emphasis on subconscious persuasion. Rather than using specific phrases to trigger subconscious responses, other business books emphasize presentation qualities that appeal to prospective customers’ subconscious.

For example, in The Psychology of Selling, Brian Tracy recommends presentation strategies for subconscious persuasion such as keeping your office organized, conveying enthusiasm, asking expert questions, displaying open body language, and controlling the conversation.

Similarly, Jordan Belfort’s Way of the Wolf recommends appealing to subconscious biases by using your tone to connect emotionally (for example, an intense, lowered voice stimulates a sense of urgency in the customer), dressing professionally, making eye contact, and adjusting your physical stance depending on the circumstances. For example, when selling to a person of the opposite sex, stand directly opposite the customer, and, when selling to a person of the same sex, stand or sit at an angle to the customer.

Additionally, record yourself making pitches and listen back to fine-tune your delivery, writes Zig Ziglar in Secrets of Closing the Sale. Your inflection has huge persuasive power, so it’s important to learn how to use your voice to convey your sales pitch and your sincerity about helping the lead. Also, listen for negative words in your pitch and eliminate them from your selling vocabulary. These include terms that imply unhappiness or pain and frame the sale as a financial transaction (avoid words like “deal,” “sale,” and “close,” for example). Also, use the most elegant or formal version of any word (for instance, use “wardrobe” instead of “closet”).

3. Empathetic

Another quality of a good salesperson is to develop empathy for your customer, according to Secrets of Closing the Sale. Empathy is understanding how someone else feels (even if you don’t currently share that feeling) and then taking steps to help the person deal with that feeling.

Empathy is effective in sales because leads are motivated to buy when they feel understood and cared for, claims Ziglar. Empathy also helps you create a better pitch because, by putting yourself in your customer’s shoes, you can gear your presentation to their specific needs, thereby increasing your chances of success.

To be empathetic, you need to develop impeccable communication skills, insists Ziglar. Pay close attention not only to what the lead says but also to what their body language indicates. A lead’s body language often shows how they really feel. They might tell you they’re not interested in your product but unconsciously touch it or move closer to it, which indicates interest. When you fully understand what the lead feels, you can respond empathetically to those feelings.

4. Persistent

Life has a way of testing us in myriad ways, making perseverance a key success strategy. It’s also key to becoming a great salesperson, says Og Mandino in The Greatest Salesman in the World. Each attempt at selling is like an axe striking at a mighty tree. The first, second, and hundredth strike may do little or nothing, but, if you keep swinging the axe, the tree will eventually fall. You’ll close the sale.

When a customer says “no” to buying your product, don’t see it as a failure. Reframe all failures as challenges. Reject the concept of failure—anything you might call a failure can just as easily be labeled an obstacle or a learning experience. Remove words like “quit,” “cannot,” and “hopeless” from your vocabulary. A great salesperson is never daunted by “no” because “no” is just a stepping stone to “yes.”

Simultaneously, remember that perseverance requires patience. Success rarely comes at the start of a project; it usually comes after overcoming various obstacles along the way.

Even after a full day of hearing “no” from potential buyers, a great salesperson doesn’t allow herself to give up. When you’re weary at the end of the day and want to go home, challenge yourself to make one more sales call. Every single call is one step on the journey to making a sale.

5. Applies Feedback

Rob Fitzpatrick’s “Mom Test” is a set of rules that ensures you receive honest feedback from customers: specifically, feedback that signals whether your idea will meet their needs and therefore be successful. The test’s name originates from the idea that mothers in particular are most likely to lie to you to spare your feelings. However, if you ask the right questions, you can get honest, valuable feedback from whomever you ask—even your mom.

As Fitzpatrick explains in his book The Mom Test, applying feedback is an important quality of a good salesperson because customer feedback can make or break your new business venture. Deep one-on-one conversations with potential customers can give you all the information you need to craft a successful business.

However, if you fail to collect or accurately interpret honest customer feedback, you could spend months or even years pouring money into a product with irredeemable flaws—or that customers never wanted in the first place. Furthermore, failing to use the Mom Test in your discussions with customers will yield information that’s worse than useless—most feedback actively pushes you toward failure by convincing you that bad ideas are good.

Fitzpatrick’s Mom Test consists of three rules:

Rule #1: Don’t pitch your idea.
Rule #2: Ask specific questions about the past.
Rule #3: Listen more than you talk.

6. Actively Listens

An essential part of building and maintaining relationships with customers is listening. In fact, The Sales Bible by Jeffrey Gitomer says that listening is probably the most important part of selling. Not only does it help you deal with customers’ complaints, but listening also helps you understand customers’ reasons for buying (or not buying) and what kind of customers they are. This understanding then enables you to make a better sales pitch.

However, many salespeople undervalue the importance of listening. Gitomer says that’s because they prejudge the other person, think they already know what the other person is going to say, or have other thoughts that distract them from the conversation.

To become a better listener, Gitomer gives the following tips:

Stay focused. Use listening noises (“I see,” “What happened next?”), put your mobile phone on silent mode, and practice mindfulness to keep your mind from wandering.
Wait for your turn. Don’t interrupt, even if you think you already know how to respond.
Be curious. Ask questions to clarify what the other person said, help you get more information, and demonstrate that you’re interested in what they have to say.

7. Trustworthy

The last quality of a good salesperson we’ll discuss is trustworthiness. Grant Cardone’s book Sell or Be Sold explains why trust is so important for the sales process and how to make the customer trust you. A lack of trust is a major reason customers don’t buy things. Customers either don’t trust the salesperson (you) or themselves:

You (the salesperson). This likely isn’t personal—some customers distrust salespeople on the whole because a few unscrupulous people have run scams or cons. When customers are skeptical of you, they might not believe you, they might challenge you, or they might seek other sources of information. Even if you do successfully sell something to someone who doesn’t trust you, you’ll probably have problems when it comes to following up, such as during delivery.
Themselves (specifically, their ability to make the right choice). If customers don’t trust themselves, this probably stems from an experience with one or more of the following:
- The customers themselves have lied or exaggerated. As a result, they know that every person has the potential to do so. They assume you’re no better than they are and are also not telling the truth. This is the most common reason for distrust.
- The customers have been victims of scams or misunderstandings.

Therefore, to sell anything, you need to demonstrate that you’re credible. This will make the customer trust you as a person, and, if she’s insecure, trust that you will help guide her to the right decision.

To create trust:

Assume the customer doesn’t trust you (even if she knows you) and doesn’t believe anything you say. Assume she’ll believe only what she can see. People believe things that they can observe for themselves far more readily than things people tell them. Additionally, people tend to assume that anything that’s written down is true.
Facilitate the customer’s research. The more information you give her, the more likely she is to buy something. Additionally, informed buyers can be easier to sell to because you can use logic—uninformed buyers can get emotional and unreasonable. (For instance, the auto industry disobeys this step—it’s notoriously stingy with information—and, as a result, it suffers from turnover and low profits.) Help customers with their research by providing:
- As much accessible, up-to-date, third-party, real-time, computer-generated data as possible
- Internet access at your place of business so you can look things up for a customer or she can look them up herself
- Your competitors’ ads, so customers can see what they’re offering without leaving your place of work.
Show her proof that you’re telling the truth by supporting everything you say with documentation or something tangible that she can see for herself.
- For example, when Cardone wanted his friend to invest in a property, he didn’t pitch it. Instead, he asked his friend to meet him at the property. When his friend saw it and all the opportunities it provided, he asked Cardone if he could invest.
Put negotiations and promises on paper as part of a buyer’s order. (You aren’t going to scare the customer off by asking her to sign something).

Wrapping Up

Great salespeople go above and beyond when appealing to customers. Selling a product isn’t simply just about ticking off a checklist of to-do items and making money. It’s about building trust and relationships with customers, and the best way to do so is to embrace these qualities of a good salesperson.

What are some other qualities of a good salesperson that we missed? Let us know in the comments below!

Breaking Down the Top 7 Qualities of a Good Salesperson