The 5 Habits of a Highly Successful Sales Team

The difference between an average and a highly successful sales team goes beyond an understanding of sales tips and tricks. Great salespeople have several unique traits that don’t just earn sales but earn the respect, loyalty, and long-term business of customers too. They’re resilient and empathetic and have spent considerable time discovering the customer’s needs and demonstrating their expertise in their product. The shifting landscape of the buyer’s journey in recent years has demonstrated the importance of these traits.

Over 50% of salespeople agree that buyers are more in control of the buying process than ever before and with an internet search at their fingertips, now rely less on sales to make decisions. But this doesn’t mean sales is obsolete. It’s estimated that high-performing salespeople continue to achieve 125% or more of their sales goals even with evolved buyer expectations. Organizations should prioritize bringing together a team that embodies key traits to drive performance and promote long-term revenue growth. The following are the top habits that can turn average salespeople into a high-performing sales team. 

Stay organized

Great organizational skills are key to success in sales. Organization means more than knowing all the relevant information of each customer. It also means excellent time management skills and optimizing each day’s schedule, so all tasks can be completed effectively and goals can be met. Another key aspect is keeping sales territory plans organized. This allows salespeople to track their progress, set reasonable goals, and define specific strategies while creating more time each day to sell. 

Highly successful salespeople also work smarter, not harder, by ditching spreadsheets and inefficient CRMs for streamlined data collection software that integrates seamlessly with Salesforce and other systems. In addition to keeping prospect and customer information organized, using advanced tech can eliminate time-consuming tasks like data entry or meeting scheduling. With automated systems, sales teams can stop spending time on manual tasks and focus on accurate data analytics and selling.

Embrace learning

Any career-driven individual will know that learning and growing are essential. For salespeople, this is no different. To grow, salespeople must become obsessed with learning, from reading books to attending webinars and listening to podcasts. A habit of learning can make any salesperson more efficient and effective in their career, but this mindset also makes it easier for them to embrace new skills, techniques, and software to better enable sales.

A different aspect of learning comes from being uncomfortable and acknowledging failure. Great salespeople understand the importance of stepping outside their comfort zone and trying something new, even if they fail. With this acknowledgment of weakness or failure, a salesperson will learn better skills faster and turn these limitations into strengths.

Grow professionally

Professional growth is another aspect of learning, and often the best path to success is by learning from others. Make it a point to shadow successful peers at work to learn their winning techniques. Building strong relationships with colleagues not only can provide insights and improve skills but also expand a salesperson’s professional network.

Great salespeople also practice all the techniques they’ve learned with friends and strangers, so they will eventually come naturally during a sales call. Spending time interacting with others also improves people skills, which are essential for connecting with customers. Being an empathetic people person will establish good rapport and build the connection a customer needs to feel confident they’re talking with the right salesperson.

Optimize personal health

Salespeople can be under a significant amount of stress at any given time and by its nature, sales is full of significant ups and downs, sometimes occurring daily. It’s crucial that sales reps understand the range of instances that can affect their emotions, so they can practice staying balanced throughout the day.

High-performing sales teams know the value of personal health in maintaining balance at work. To be enthusiastic and alert during sales calls, salespeople must be well-rested and have a clear mind. This can often be accomplished by optimizing exercising, good sleep habits, and maintaining a balanced diet. A healthy body and clear mind can help improve general mood as well as help manage emotions during sales calls.

Lead with empathy

Empathy is the ability to connect with the emotions of your customers. Every customer has a different need, so it’s important to be genuinely curious and empathetic toward their current situation. Without this deeper connection, it is difficult to convince a customer to buy your product. Especially in today’s world of remote conferences and video calls, making a human connection is a necessity.

Successful sales teams understand that empathy means taking the extra time to align with each customers’ unique needs and demonstrating they understand their struggles, hesitations, and goals. When only 54% of buyers feel like salespeople speak to their interests specifically, leading with empathy can be the difference between a lost lead and a new customer.

For example, at FormAssembly, our sales team uses a pre-call questionnaire (built with our own software) to learn about a prospect’s current problems, ask the right questions, and create a follow-up action plan. This helps us empathize with prospects, understand their pain points, and make sure our meeting time is well spent. This tactic, among others, helped our team increase revenue by 62% over the past two years as a remote-first company.

Be your own customer

Of course, to appropriately communicate the value of your product, you need to be intimately aware of just how much of a difference it can make in your prospects’ lives. At FormAssembly, we are constantly using our own data collection platform to streamline day-to-day processes and free up time to connect with our prospects. To learn more about how we use our own product to drive sales success, check out this blog post. 

To learn more about using FormAssembly with Salesforce, download our FormAssembly + Salesforce eBook below.