10 Sales Qualities That Make Your Sales Reps Irresistible to Clients

Sales reps represent your brand. They generate revenue by finding new customers and taking care of the old ones. They are critical for your success.

As a sales manager or a business owner, you must make the right choices when choosing new hires and keeping your current team members. But what exactly qualifies successful salespeople, and how do you find such individuals for your team?

To keep your sales team on top of the game, each team member has to possess specific characteristics that will bring you profit. Also, if your sales representatives make mistakes, it can be costly for your business.

You have to train your employees to reduce their mistakes and incite their best qualities. The best way to do that is by using a sales training platform like Wonderway, which uses machine learning and helps you leverage data to develop the most suitable training for your sales team. You can sign up for Wonderway today to help your most crucial team members upgrade their sales skills.

In today's article, we will discuss the importance of sales qualities and explain how Wonderway helps you train your sales professionals to achieve your business goals.

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How hiring salespeople with poor sales qualities affects your business

Salespeople represent the connection between your business and your customer. You will not attract or retain many customers if that connection doesn't work.

If your employees, for example, do not know anything about your product or have poor communication skills, they will repel new customers and do an anti-campaign for your brand. If your sales rep calls your customer but ends up being non-informative and rude, the client will feel disappointed and ready to buy a competitor’s product.

Sales representatives are the faces of your business and have to be impeccable.

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The key sales stats to know in 2022

A bad hire can cost you up to $240,000, which may sound excessive. Once you break down the numbers, you will understand why you should never make a hiring mistake again. 

An incompetent sales representative can be more damaging to your business than any other employee. They will not only cost you salary, benefits, or training but also directly reduce the number of customers and opportunities. They can also damage your reputation, which you cannot easily measure.

Even though the sales environment is changing, and selling is getting harder every decade, an old article from Harvard Business Review on sales reps’ biggest mistakes still very much stands. 

Let’s look at some key stats to know:

• 57% of people said they are not interested in buying a product if a sales rep is pushy
• 75% of prospects prefer not to meet face to face with salespeople
• 60% of contacted customers reject the offer four times before accepting it 
• 8 out of 10 prospects prefer e-mail as a way of communicating
• 78% of sales representatives who use social media outsell their colleagues
• 40% of companies fail to meet their revenue goals

In the following section, we will show what sales qualities your customers find attractive.

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10 sales qualities of a good salesperson

Customers are those who keep your business running. Their opinions matter the most, especially regarding your sales team members.

What exactly are the traits of a good sales rep from a customer’s perspective? Let’s discuss this in the following sections.

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1. Authenticity

Many sales professionals approach customers throughout their life. What affects them is authenticity.

Authenticity as sales quality is crucial because it can increase the chances of a successful sale. Sales associates who are authentic will connect with customers on an emotional level, and this can result in more sales. 

Authenticity can be demonstrated through one’s actions, words, and appearance. For example, authentic sales representatives will wear clothes that fit the brand’s aesthetic. They will also speak naturally and avoid excessive slang or jargon. By remaining genuine, sales reps are more likely to be remembered and have a better chance of closing a sale.

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2. Trustworthiness, honesty, and transparency

Authenticity connects to these three traits. If your sales rep is authentic, that will establish trust in their prospect. Great salespeople have to communicate honestly with a customer and be transparent about how their product cannot or can help them.

An inexperienced salesperson who forces their ideas on a customer who is not interested will lose the customer to someone else. 

On the other hand, if a sales rep sees that the prospect is not a good fit for your brand and acknowledges it, this will build trust and make your brand look good. They may not have a closed deal at that moment, but your reputation will certainly increase.

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3. Sales drive and initiative

Great salespeople are driven. They not only know your company, but they are also passionate about it. Your product is their product, your service is their service, and they invest all efforts in selling it.

Every good sales team member has the drive to achieve the goals that you have set. They start their day with these goals, working tirelessly to meet or exceed them.

The initiative also represents a crucial aspect of a sales process. Your employees must be brave and ready to start a conversation and ask essential questions. They also must be prepared to offer solutions.

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4. Expert knowledge of the product or service

Sales reps have to know every detail to offer your products or services as solutions for customers’ needs and problems. They also have to understand how your product or service is not a good fit for a specific prospect and be careful not to promise too much. Further, showing their knowledge will incite the trust and respect they need to seal the deal.

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5. Great listening skills

If sales reps know the product or service, they know how it can help your customer. However, they must stop talking and start listening and observing to understand what your customers need.

A good salesperson has to understand a prospect. They have to get an insight into their concerns. It will not only lead to improving the connection but will give them clues on how to present your product or service as a solution. 

A good salesperson must be able to ask questions skillfully and know the answers to the questions prospects ask. Once your sales reps talk to prospects and hear them out, they will lower their guard and open up. They will start trusting your team and hear how your sales reps can solve their issues.

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6. Outstanding communication skills

A good salesperson needs to have excellent verbal skills. They are trying to sell your product or service by using their words. Those words must be professional, impeccable, and adjusted to a context.

A successful salesperson will talk with many people throughout their career, depending on the product or service they are selling. The most important thing they must know is how to adjust their communication to suit a particular person.

If they use easily understandable concepts, customers will see them as approachable and feel comfortable. This flexibility in your sales team's communication style will calm your potential customers, further inciting their trust in your brand and willingness to pay for your product.

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7. Proactivity and problem-solving skills

Once they know prospects' concerns or needs, sales reps have to offer them solutions. Great salespeople always take a proactive approach and don’t get scared if customers ask hard questions.

Improvisation, clever answers, or innovative solutions to prospects’ problems help your sales reps show confidence. Being ready to face adverse situations separates a bad from a good sales team.

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8. Negotiation skills

Most successful salespeople are great negotiators. They not only know how to close the deal, they know how to bargain. They know how to add additional features to contracts and recognize if they need to lower the profit margin to keep a customer from turning to your competitor.

Negotiation represents a critical part of a sales process, as it can potentially make or break your company’s goals.

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9. Accountability and commitment to results

Good salespeople must act responsibly to be adequate employees. They have to show accountability for reaching or failing the goals of your business.

To have the drive to make them successful, sales representatives have to approach your product or service as if it were their own. Only with that perspective will they be genuinely committed to succeeding.

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10. Customer service skills

Aside from the nine qualities we mentioned, the best salespeople must have all basic customer service skills. They must be patient, use positive language, have good listening skills, and be highly adaptable to situations where usual scenarios do not work to solve customers' issues.

Now that you know the best sales qualities your sales representatives should have, let’s discuss how Wonderway helps you improve their sales skills.

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Wonderway helps you make successful salespeople with superb sales qualities

In previous sections, we showed the characteristics that successful salespeople have to possess. What can you do to install those traits in your employees? The most efficient way is to sign up for a sales training platform to speed up the process. 

Wonderway is a data-driven sales training platform powered by machine learning. It helps you assess your sales reps' performance, identify areas for improvement, create customized training for each team member or use Wonderway training materials developed by top professionals in the tech industry. You can use Wonderway for onboarding, upskilling, and certifications. Let’s discuss each of them in detail.

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Wonderway sales onboarding

Solid sales onboarding can turn your new sales hires into productive salespeople in the nick of time. With Wonderway, you can reduce the ramp time by 50%! Let’s explain how it works.

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1. Create development programs and set clear milestones

To help your new hires become efficient workers, you should set a program with precise tasks and milestones. For example, you can set a goal for every new sales rep to close a deal within their first month of work. On that journey, you will support them with a carefully designed development program to help them integrate into the company.

Our Sales Enablement Consultant will review your program and milestones, ensuring they are realistic and easily measured. Once designed, the development program will represent a pathway to success for all your new employees.

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2. Use first-class content and templates created by industry experts

If you already have an onboarding program, our Sales Enablement Consultant will assist you with importing and enhancing it. 

On the other hand, with high-quality sales training material created by our sales experts, you can turn your basic onboarding program into months-long training that significantly reduces ramp time and enhances the knowledge of your sales representatives.

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3. Make your training programs interactive and engaging

The worst possible thing you can do is to have a tedious onboarding process, as this will reduce the motivation of every new hire. Provide your sales reps with something exciting to keep them engaged.

With Wonderway, you can reuse internal training docs and develop interactive programs containing video recordings, quizzes, and other assessments. It will also help your trainers spend more time giving feedback and coaching instead of repeating the same old demo in each training cycle.

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Wonderway sales training

Sales training should not be reserved just for new hires. You should constantly invest in your employees and measure their performance. Wonderway uses machine learning to provide you with actionable insights. 

Our upskilling software helps you assess critical skills for each sales role, collect feedback from sales managers and employees and work on further improvements. It provenly increases close rates by 40%. Here is what Wonderway can do for your sales team.

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1. Identify skills and sales qualities your sales reps lack

Our Sales Enablement Consultant will help you choose skills you consider essential for a specific role. Then, by collecting and analyzing data gathered from your employees, our software will detect the skills they lack.

Based on this analysis, both sales managers and workers will know where they need to improve. To close those gaps, they can go through off-the-shelf programs Wonderway offers.

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2. Differentiate high-performers from low-performers

Wonderway integrates with your CRM providing you with performance review data. By comparing sales reps' skills, you will get enough information to create a top-performing team. You can focus on conversion analytics and understand how your sales team impacts your revenue.

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3. Train your sales professional on real deals

Wonderway offers training for each stage of a sales process, e.g., prospecting, discovery, negotiation, etc. Training is valuable to your reps, as they can apply the skills they learn to advance existing open deals and turn prospects into customers.

For example, if they are in a negotiation phase with a prospect, Wonderway will help them with each step they should take to have the best chance of closing a deal.

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4. Get actionable insights with advanced analytics

Leveraging data is crucial for your sales teams. Using data and tracking improvements, Wonderway can show your sales representatives how much money they are making. You will get an insight into training’s return on investment.

If these two Wonderway features seem more than enough, wait until you hear about a third one.

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Wonderway sales certification

Wonderway sales certification helps you track the engagement and progress of your sales reps. Our certification program has proven to be a very successful way to align your sales team skills. Here is what you can achieve with Wonderway.

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1. Make regular assessments

Wonderway offers qualitative and quantitative assessments. With the certification feature, you can provide pass or fail quizzes to your sales representatives to keep them focused and observe if they are paying attention to their sales training. 

Additionally, you can send notifications and track your messages if you changed a specific process, product, or service and want to inform all of your sales reps about the difference.

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2. Provide certification and boost sales reps’ confidence

Once they pass each stage of training, you can provide sales reps with certification. This way, you will boost their confidence and reward employees for doing their most in training and setting an example to others. 

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Sales qualities: The bottom line

Salespeople representing your brand must be authentic and trustworthy and show drive and commitment to your business.

They have to know every detail about your product or service and at the same time be great listeners and communicators so they can understand the prospects' needs and wants. They also have to think quickly, be proactive, and negotiate the best deals.

To make the sales experts out of your employees, you can start using Wonderway. Our sales training platform offers you three programs: onboarding, upskilling, and certification. 

Wonderway uses machine learning to provide your employees with training tailored specifically for their skill gaps. Onboarding will help new hires adjust to your company faster so they can close more deals in a shorter period. 

Upskilling will help you assess and improve the skills and qualities of your existing sales team members to increase your revenue. As all your employees have access to training, you can reward the best ones with certificates and further increase their motivation and sales drive.

If you recognize the value of continuous training programs, sign up now for Wonderway. In the end, nothing is more costly than wasting time.