It is clear to me that I am a different kind of sales rep. It took me a while to realize it but now that I know I am I would love to get people out there who might not have thought sales was for them understanding why it might be.
1. You like to help people. A LOT…
- In general are you a helpful person?
- Do you find yourself feeling happy when you have helped someone do something better?
- Do you feel good about yourself when you know something you did made someone better at something?
- If you feel pleasure about helping in general you should look into sales.
Why? If you are a natural helper sales is a good place for you. A good sales person is a helper. A person who wants to help their prospect figure out what challenges the product or service you sell will help them do something better.
2. You like exploring things to figure out what is wrong.
- Are you always thinking why does something do what it does?
- Why are we doing something the way we are when we know there is a better way to do it?
The first part of a sales process is always about exploration. The process of exploring if there is something you can help with is exploration. People who enjoy learning about a process that someone is currently doing today vs their desired state are good fits for sales. Those type of people will always ask the right questions for the right reasons. These two kinds of qualities together make for an ideal sales rep.
3. You make judgments quickly and opinions quickly from what you learn.
- Do you always have an opinion?
- Are you the type of person who listens to something, quickly thinks about it and then makes an opinion?
Great sales people need to think on their feet. You need to be someone who is quickly able to assess a situation with a prospect and give feedback. Your job as a sales person is technically to listen, assess and think about what you have been told and then react accordingly. You need to be a thoughtful person who can think about what someone says to you and then also have an opinion of your own.
4. You love to learn.
- Are you constantly reading about things that you want to know how they work?
- Do you love to learn something?
- Do you like to learn something and then apply what you learned?
Sales is a process. That process needs to evolve over time as the market changes. If you enjoy learning sales could be a good spot for you. A lot of traditional sales reps as we know them don’t like to learn new things. They want to do the same old thing day after day. Today’s sales rep needs to be a learner. They need to be someone who wants to makes changes to their process and is open to learning new ways to do things. Today’s sales rep is someone who yearns to learn and will make time in their day to do so.
5. You like to make people happy.
- Do you do things just to make people happy around you?
- Do you sometimes care more about other people than yourself?
- At the end of your day do you lie in bed thinking about your day and what made you happy?
Happy customers and happy prospects are every employer’s dream. A company’s purpose is to bring in customers. If your sales people naturally want to make people happy they will most likely be a sales rep who wants to have happy customers. These type of people are motivated more by having good fit customers who are happy with what they bought from them. That makes today’s sales rep fulfilled. A happy sales rep is someone who has happy customers.
Today’s sales person is one who is motivated by different things that what a traditional sales rep has always been said to be. Yesterday’s sales rep was someone who cared only about making money and about their selves.
Today’s sales rep is someone who cares more about bringing on a good fit and making their customer happy.
People ask me how I always hit my quota and how I do so well. I tell them, “I am just doing my job.” People at HubSpot know that saying. “Just doing my job”… What that means when I say that is that I do well at my job because of the above things. I am naturally a hard worker. I like to work because I actually enjoy helping make a marketers job easier. I enjoy knowing that I am helping a company grow by getting them to use HubSpot. Those things make me happy and therefore I enjoy working.
I have not always enjoyed what I did for work. But, I can say that since day 1 at HubSpot I have loved what I do. Today’s sales rep needs to have the five qualities I listed above because those people will work hard and love what they do. They will hit quota every month because their motivating factors are not just money. I love money just as much as anyone else but it is not the only thing I care about. It is not my sole driving factor when I work. My driving force is knowing that what I am doing is going to help get HubSpot into the hands of people who need it. It will help their company to grow and help support the marketing process they want. That makes me happy and keeps me motivated day to day.
If you think the above qualities match your style you should get into today’s sales. There is a new sales rep and they are one that has these qualities. If you can really honestly tell yourself everyday when you close you computer and go home for the day that you did the best you could do you are on your way to being a successful sales rep as well as a good one.
If you hire for today’s sales rep you will most likely end up with a winning and successful sales force for your company. People with these qualities at my company hit quota and exceed quota every month. Those that don’t have these qualities and are really just in sales because they want to make money don’t hit their goals every month. The reason why is because they care about the wrong things.
So when you think about your month and that you want to hit your quota ask yourself if you tried your hardest at doing the above things.
- Were you thinking about the end goal of having a happy customer on every single part of your sales process?
- Did you really try to help your prospect today when you spoke with them?
- Can you honestly and whole-heartedly say that you are in sales because you want to help people solve a problem that your company solves?
- Did you learn something new today that will help you tomorrow?
- Did you do a great job at exploring your potential customers problems?
- Do you have a real opinion and thought process as to why you think you can help your prospect?
- Was your prospect pleasantly surprised with your sales process? Did they find it refreshing?
Today’s sales rep is one where your prospect asks you to join their sales team because you did such a great job. You had a sales process that made your prospect think and made them think about their own sales process. Today’s sales rep is one where your prospect appreciates you and your time because they learned something from you. Today’s sales rep is someone where your prospect goes away from your meeting feeling like you helped them.
