How was your life in 2023? What did you achieve? Did you grow and nurture healthy relationships? How was your stress and enjoyment levels in your daily life? Were you leading a balanced life? Any failing forward? I have found most salespeople try to balance their lives by placing their sales target on one end of life see saw and on the other end family, health, hobbies, and what appear to be less important aspects of life.

Experimenting with ChatGPT has led me to compile what are the skills, attitudes, and traits of successful salespeople. Here are the 4 world-class leaders in sales productivity that I respect and have learned from during my global career as a global salesperson: Zig Ziglar, Jeffrey Gitomer, AchieveGlobal, and Harvard Business Review. Each sales expert lists out 5-6 key attributes that lead to sales success.

What makes a salesperson a good listener? First, he/she suspends his own assumptions in order to give the customer’s ideas priority. When he/she asks questions, it is to build trust and rapport with the customer. Open questions work best like "Tell me more about that." Second, the good listener suspends judgment and debate. As Stephen Covey said, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” Give the customer the benefit of the doubt.

Even very successful salespeople fail more than they succeed. Not every prospect becomes an appointment, not every customer interaction ends in a successful sale. I learned long ago that “Failing Forward” in daily sales activities is the secret ingredient that lifted me up to future sales success. “Failing Forward” means learning and growing from your sales mistakes, customer rejection, and marketplace changes.