Great Sales Personalities = Great Sales!

One of the most powerful sales tools some salespeople overlook is their personality. Your personality is a key influence to a sale. It is proven that people buy from people they like, trust, and have confidence in. So each day that you are at work you must wake up, brush off that personality, check your attitude, and go to work as if you don't have a problem in the world. You must have your game on!

When a prospect walks in the door or calls on the phone, you must be ready to get your game on. After all, it's what you do! You must be prepared to give them your undivided attention to establish the rapport that will be necessary to close the deal! It's not always easy to set paperwork aside or juggle two different prospects at once, but you must find a way to make them feel important and make time to build rapport and get to know them through time and questioning. Make it a goal to spend at least 30 minutes of quality time with your prospects; that will increase your chance of a sale by 30%. In order for them to want to spend that much time with you, you must have your sales personality in check.

Here are eight areas of a Sales Personality that you can work on.

Confidence - You must be confident about yourself and your abilities before you can be confident about what you are selling. Confidence comes from knowing your trade, your capabilities, and loving what you do. Your confidence should come across as secure and dependable, not arrogant. A confident salesperson is willing to take the time to find out what the real needs of their customers are. They don't jump at a prospect's first comment and try to close.

Knowledge - You must be the one stop shop for real estate knowledge. You must know everything about your community, builder, product, lending process, escrow process, paperwork explanations, taxes, and HOA. You name it. You should be the expert! When you can know and perform your sales work easily and smoothly it calms the buyer, who is making the biggest purchase of his or her life. This takes background work on your part, but all sales work pays off in dollars eventually.

Having a Positive Attitude - Here's a good tip for daily attitude checks; Everyday when you shower, take a moment to visualize showering off any old attitudes or negativity and start your new work day positive and fresh. Another method is to read one positive sales tool each morning to start your day. Feed your mind with positivity and it will spread throughout your life. To successfully use your personality as a sales tool, you must be someone that people like to associate with. Negative or self-serving personalities will not see positive results. Your personality must be upbeat in both actions and words, and should be complimentary to every prospect you come in contact with.

Being Charming - To be charming means having the power to delight and attract people. To be a personality that is attractive to others. Words that go along with charming are delightful, amicable, attracting, appealing, pleasant, polite, charismatic, fascinating, enchanting... by now you get the picture. All of these words used in a positive manner are key personality traits of a great sales person. Your personality must include many of these traits in order to be a great Sales Personality.

Listening Skills - Active Listening is a way of listening and responding to another person that improves mutual understanding. Often when people talk to each other, they don't listen attentively. They are often distracted, half-listening, and half-thinking about something else. Active listening is one of the most important sales skills you should have in your artillery. The mind races faster than people can speak. The solution is to listen with a purpose. You listen with a purpose in order to gain information, obtain directions, understand the needs of others, solve their problems, share their interests, support them, sell them and close them.

Being Passionate - Passion about who you are and what you do is contagious. Your passion about what you do, your product, and your builder should come through right away with your prospects. It is what will get them excited. It is the one thing they will remember and feel from you. It is the one thing that will set you apart from your competition.

Being Genuine - People hate being sold, but love to buy. You must be genuine in your approach with people. Be real. You must be genuinely interested in them and their quest for homeownership. Your genuine interest in them through asking great questions helps expose the underlying needs that the customer may otherwise not be willing to share.

Friendliness - A smile goes a long way. When you smile, the person you are talking too most always smiles back. The first steps to being friendly is having a great smile, a great meet & greet and truly being interested in people. When you are genuine, most people will take your interest in them and your questions as being "friendly". They will remember how much "friendlier" you were over all the others they visited that day. You must be someone that others want to associate with and buy from.

Happy Sales!

Shirleen Von Hoffmann is President & Builder Consultant of Homebuilders AdvantEdge which specializes in Secret Shopping, Sales Training, Seminars, One-on-One onsite training, coaching, and builder consultation. Learn more by visiting Shirleen's profile.