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Diamonds are the hardest naturally forming material on Earth, known for their beauty, strength, and durability. Their name comes from ancient Greek (αδάμας – adámas) meaning unbreakable or invincible.
Contrary to popular belief, diamonds do not come from coal. They form beneath the Earth’s crust, from pure carbon. Over time, pressure combined with intense heat creates diamonds. The rough material then has to be polished and cut to perfect shape before it’s attractive enough to be a girl’s best friend.
Great salespeople, like diamonds, take time to reach their full potential…and are not easy to find. The single most significant problem facing businesses today is finding, creating, and retaining top talent. Good people, and great sellers, solve most problems in any organization. Sales is a profession that can’t use robots, automation, or systems to replace talent. Sure, systems can maximize performance, but people — talented people, make any system work.
Hiring mistakes are very costly to any business. Here are some shocking statistics: Over 80% of resumes contain false or misleading information. Half (yes 50%) of your candidates will lie or exaggerate their accomplishments. There are even websites devoted to perpetuating fraud: www.nextdaydiplomas.com
Are great sellers born or created through time, training and pressure like diamonds? The short answer is yes. We do believe some people have a more natural pre-disposition to becoming successful sellers, and I believe there are those who no matter how much you work with them, will never become great sellers. In my experience, five fundamental traits help predict a person’s potential to become a great seller. Diamonds have their four C’s; I believe sellers need five C’s:
Compassion - Compassion is the feeling of empathy for others.
Curiosity - An insatiable desire to know more
Competence - Expertise
Creativity - The ability to solve problems
Communication Skills
Finding great sales talent can be like digging for diamonds. You must get your hands dirty. Not all candidates will be diamonds when you meet them. Identify the must-have traits and competencies to be successful on your team. Then with a little polish, (training) experience, (time) and competition (pressure) you will create diamonds and solve your number one problem.
Over the years we have developed a list of “must-have traits” for sales success. Traits are those qualities that people are born with. You can improve them, but traits are ingrained in the personality. Skills are learned behaviors. This is not designed to be an all-inclusive list, we are always adding to it. In our Leadership MasterClass, we advise managers to pick the top five “must-haves.” These are the traits that given the make-up of the team, or the market, are the things that you must have. There are about 70 items on the list, no candidate will have all the traits which is why it’s important to pick the ones most important for your situation.
If you would like a copy of this list of traits, just email me and I’ll be happy to send it. If you have traits, you look for that are not on the list, it would be great if you would share those with us so we can add them.
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