7 Ways Sales Intelligence Gives You Super Powers

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I was recently invited to guest post for InsideView, one of my favorite sales & marketing software tools. The abridged version is below and you can read the original post here.

Sales Intelligence Super Powers

Image courtesy of InsideView

In his June 27, 2011 Harvard Business Review article, “Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople,” Steve W. Martin published the main key personality attributes he discovered after administering 1,000 personality tests to top business-to-business salespeople.

Mr. Martin revealed that the seven most common personality traits of top performers are:

  1. Modesty
  2. Conscientiousness
  3. Achievement Orientation
  4. Curiosity
  5. Lack of Gregariousness
  6. Lack of Discouragement
  7. Lack of Self-Consciousness.

Martin notes that the “key personality traits directly influence top performers’ selling style and ultimately their success.”

Could it be that these traits of sales superstars could be considered the inherent “super powers” of successful sales people?

Now, before you start exposing your sales team to gamma rays and radioactive spiders, there’s another solution. You can use sales intelligence to amplify these traits amongst your sales team and empower them to be better salespeople. Here’s how:

1. MODESTY

Selling Style Impact: Team Orientation

Top salespeople aren’t concerned about who gets the accolades for a sale – they just want to do their job and help their clients. So, they position their team to accounts as the centerpiece of value.

Sales Intelligence Amplifier: Intros, Referrals and References

Sales intelligence can quickly identify connections between the salesperson, the salesperson’s colleagues, and the account contact. Through those connections, the salesperson can humbly leverage their network for intros, referrals and references instead of boasting about how great they are directly to the prospect.

2. CONSCIENTIOUSNESS

Selling Style Impact: Account Control

Top salespeople control the sales process; quickly determining when an account is not a candidate, when it’s time to re-engage and when it’s time for the next step.

Sales Intelligence Amplifier: Smart Agents and Watchlists

Features like “Smart Agents and Watchlists”, provide instant alerts on events such as leadership changes, mergers & acquisitions, funding and product launches. Rather than scouring the Internet on a daily basis looking for news and updates, InsideView sends these alerts so that the salesperson is always knowledgeable and in control of their account.

3. ACHIEVEMENT ORIENTATION

Selling Style Impact: Political Orientation

Martin states that, “During sales cycles, top sales performers seek to understand the politics of customer decision-making. Their goal orientation instinctively drives them to meet with key decision-makers.”

Sales Intelligence Amplifier: People

One of the greatest new features from InsideView is Industry Insights which gives a 360 degree view of the company and its industry. Salespeople can quickly research and obtain information on the key decision-makers before even asking the customer to explain their decision-making process.

4. CURIOSITY

Selling Style Impact: Inquisitiveness

Successful salespeople are naturally curious and unafraid to ask customers the questions that are vital to uncovering a fit.

Sales Intelligence Amplifier: Account Profile, News and Smart Agents

Sales intelligence aggregates and provides quick access to the mundane data, allowing the salesperson to be well-informed going into client calls and focus the time on the vital questions around needs and process. Using a sales intelligence platform, such as InsideView, salespeople can now find the right people in an organization and understand the right message they need to reach out.

5. LACK OF GREGARIOUSNESS

Selling Style Impact: Dominance

Successful salespeople establish expertise with contacts and as a result, their customers are willing to follow the salesperson’s recommendations and advice.

Sales Intelligence Amplifier: Intros, Referrals and References

Authority is established early on when a relationship starts with one of the customer’s trusted peers making a recommendation to speak with the salesperson. Using the connections feature from InsideView, you can easily peer into the connections you have within every organization. What’s great is that it grabs connections from social media sources such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

6. LACK OF DISCOURAGEMENT

Selling Style Impact: Competitiveness

According to Martin, “top performers are able to handle emotional disappointments, bounce back from losses, and mentally prepare themselves for the next opportunity to compete.”

Sales Intelligence Amplifier: Build a List

If you missed your quarter because one deal fell through, it’s hard not to feel like you’re in the dumps. Sales intelligence allows you to quickly build a list of targeted accounts to keep your prospecting engine running and your pipeline full of opportunities so you can shrug off the lost opportunities and continue to charge like a rhino.

(For more tips, advice and best practices for filling up your pipeline, download a free copy of Spear Marketing Group’s High Tech Direct Marketing Handbook.)

7. LACK OF SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS

Selling Style Impact: Aggressiveness

Top salespeople are fearless and comfortable fighting for their cause.

Sales Intelligence Amplifier: Sales Intelligence

The bottom line is simply that confidence is preparation. Sales intelligence empowers your salespeople with quick access to the tools they need to hit the goals and drive revenue.

Republished with author's permission from original post.

Tom Meriam
Tom is a B2B and B2C sales and marketing veteran, having held senior level roles in the media and financial services industries as well as in the agency space.

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