What makes a good sales person?

Grant Leboff: So, Phil, in your book you talk about salespeople and people might be surprised to see that you’ve written salespeople being people like Martin Luther King, Alex Ferguson, Oprah Winfrey … Explain why you think those people are salespeople.

Phil M Jones: It’s kind of funny really because salespeople largely have a really bad reputation, always round where they’re frowned upon, etc. To me, what a salesperson really is is just a purveyor of ideas, somebody who can encourage an emotion in somebody, and move somebody to maybe do something they hadn’t thought of towards themselves. More often than not, what people are selling isn’t necessarily a thing, a product, a commodity, it’s an idea. It’s a thought that then follows an action. Some of those people like you mentioned are brilliant at getting other people to do stuff, think stuff, or act upon things they wouldn’t have done otherwise without the influence of that individual.

Grant Leboff: So that being the case, what would you say makes a good salesperson?

Phil M Jones: Great salespeople … Firstly, people talk about salespeople not being born, right? In my experience, everybody was born a salesperson. Three-year-olds are brilliant at getting what they want and they do it because they just ask for it, right? So having just the audacity to ask for things, I think, is a really important ingredient somebody needs to have as a salesperson, just straight up, kind of big balls to ask. Then outside of that, it’s genuine care. It’s not … I hear people say they can sell ice to Eskimos like it’s a good thing, because the Eskimo’s going to wake up the next day remarkably disappointed realizing that they don’t need any more ice. It’s about selling something to somebody that they genuinely care about. That means you’ve got to be good enough to ask a few questions and listen.

Great salespeople need to be able to show empathy, understand where the other person is coming from, and then find a way that they can relate their product, service, or thing, to get the other person the thing that they didn’t even know that they wanted. That listening skill is important coupled with some enthusiasm. Enthusiasm itself is a catalyst a decision. What I love to see in a great salesperson is somebody who’s passionate about their products, their service, but most importantly passionate about the results their thing is going to achieve for the person they’re speaking to.

Grant Leboff: So someone that’s starting out now who perhaps got their own business or finds themselves in a sales role that they can expect to be in, … and they’re daunted by it. What would you say would be the first sort of areas to start thinking about?

Phil M Jones: Okay. Often what people jumps towards is they think they have to know their product, they have to know their product, they have to know their product, so they spend an age in trying to understand their product knowledge and then dump that on everybody that they come into contact with.

My thoughts are real different to that. Is what people want to get focused on the understanding the … If they’re in sales, they’re in the people business. In fact, everything they need to know about the other person is inside the other person, it has nothing to do with them as an individual. It’s just getting out and about and being brave to ask questions to find out what the other person wants and do it excitedly and energetically and in a way that the other person is going to feel the passion that you have towards the results that you can achieve for them.

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