6 Main Components That Create Sales Excellence

Excellence is a word that is bandied about so much these days that it can often lose its meaning or its differentiation.

The dictionary defines it as ‘being exceptional, being superior in some way, achieving extreme merit, pre-eminence or distinction’.

When we use the term, we commonly confuse it with something that is just better or an improvement of some sort.

However, for something or someone to be given the accolade of ‘excellence’, we must be more than just better; we need to identify the qualities that deserve the term, or we are in danger of diminishing the stand-out qualities that are required to receive the honour.

To achieve excellence in sales, we need to lay the foundations that support and enable the results we need to achieve. I wrote about the qualities of a good salesperson. Here, we discuss a further six key components that create excellence in salespeople and make them stand out from the crowd.

The first three are classed as intrapersonal skills (internally focussed) and the others are interpersonal (externally focussed). Each one will assist in the development of quality and stature.

Sales Excellence Components

Develop A Full Range of Skills & Attributes

The top salespeople we have encountered take their own personal development very seriously. They create and implement a development plan for themselves that include seeking out Selling Skills Training and Sales Coaching opportunities, reading, listening to and watching subject matter experts, update their product knowledge, develop their industry knowledge and plan their career progression in such a way that it enhances opportunities at every step.

Also, they see how new technologies their own company and competitors are producing add value to the industry, learning how these advancements affect and add value from their customers’ perspectives.

Accept Change as The Norm & Embrace It for Progressing Salesmanship

Great value-creators recognise that they must build a clear and flexible path through the changes their customers and industry must go through. They understand that their products and services must be instrumental in driving those changes. This requires the mindset to be adaptable to whatever circumstances the customer may throw at them.

It’s all well and good having a pre-defined sales process and sales funnel but is it continually aligned to your different buyer types make their purchasing decision? This is often overlooked.

Become Future-Focussed

The high-quality salesperson will recognise the lessons that past teaches, grab hold of the opportunities the present offers and develop the foresight to apply those learnings to the future. In other words, they see the only thing they really have control over are those future opportunities.

By recognising the future is a blank slate ready to be written upon, the great salesperson doesn’t harbour resentment over what has occurred but treats it as a school to learn how to build resilience and elasticity in their future.

It’s a shift in their sales mindset that makes them stand out from the rest.