I'm eyebrow deep in research on characteristics of top-performing salespeople in complex sales deals.
I’ve read a ton of books and articles, listened to lots of podcasts and audiobooks, and studied the research generated by important studies. Here’s what I found…
Three characteristics kept appearing
Resiliency, adaptability, and confidence are common indicators of future success. If you have one of these traits, you’re more likely to be a good salesperson. If you have all of these characteristics, you’re most likely to be an extraordinary salesperson.
Resiliency is the capacity to recover from difficult situations, to bounce back into shape after getting twisted and bent from external forces. If COVID-19 is a punch to the gut, resiliency is our ability to take the blow, recover, and keep on going.
Interestingly, when you dig a bit deeper you get a clearer sense of certain attributes and behaviors in resilient people:
While these certainly sound like the characteristics of a good salesperson, they also sound like what’s needed right now during this pandemic.
Adaptability is the quality of being able to adjust to new conditions. It’s like a sibling of resiliency. Take what’s thrown at you, reframe your understanding, and carry on toward your goal. Those who adapt:
I want to be clear: These are all more than just being flexible. When you adapt, it allows you to overcome the obstacles in your way with both your heart and your head. You see change as inevitable, as expected, even helpful.
Through change, the adaptable person thinks, “This will help me grow…in a positive way.”
In times of stress, the adaptable person thinks, “How can I use this current situation as an opportunity for future success?”
The third characteristic I found was confidence, a feeling or belief that you can do something. What’s interesting about confidence is that sometimes it’s based on past performance. We’ve done something before and so we can do it again. With the pandemic, though, no one’s been through something exactly like this before.
Sure, people like me (and many, many other business leaders) have steered teams through the Great Recession and/or 9/11 - or other terrible crises in their businesses. Many have navigated storms in our personal lives when everything around us is in disarray.
If you’ve been through experiences like these you build on them when you face new obstacles.
While every challenge is different, they all remind me of “a widget is a widget is a widget.” What I mean is, while you can find differences between tough times, still they all share the same thing in common:
It’s tough out there
In challenging times, people who’ve been through them before go back to those situations and recall mindsets, decision-making criteria, principles, strategies, approaches, and activities that led them through that particular crisis. It’s like a trigger goes off and you know what you’re supposed to do all over again. A challenge is a challenge is a challenge…
But if you’ve not yet experienced tough times – if you’ve worked only during the Golden Age of Events (2010 through three months ago) – you have to believe confidence is not only based on past performance. It’s not even based on competence or skills or proven abilities. You know nothing you’ve ever done has trained you for this moment.
How could it? You just…believe you’ll succeed
Be now, do next, have later
Ram Daas made famous the “Be-Do-Have” model in the 1970’s. It’s a simple idea that communicates all the ways you’ll find success in life and in business - and the ways you won’t find it.
In three words said two different ways you find the one thing that separates successful small-business owners from those who’ll constantly struggle or go out of business in the coming months.
Be-Do-Have v. Have-Do-Be
Coaches have been using this model for nearly 50 years and it’s a good one to frame an understanding of the 2020 pandemic:
Or said another way:
Be: Adaptable, confident, and resilient.
Do: the activities we suggest in our newsletter/blog/coaching.
Have: the kind of business that survives the pandemic and thrives in 2021.
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