Modern Selling: Four Skills That Will Define Tomorrow's Best Salespeople

What makes a great salesperson? A great salesperson consistently closes 50% or more revenue than their peers, wins new accounts rather than just milking current customers, sells a mix of revenue in line with company goals, and makes sure projects are profitable.

As we move into the AI era of business-to-business sales, what skills are necessary to become one of these great salespeople? There are four skills that these types of incredible producers share:

1. Persistence above all else.

The most common trait I've observed in great salespeople isn't charisma or creativity. It's persistence. They show up every day and follow a process. They don't wait for inspiration; they do the work.

This might sound boring and very 20th century, and frankly, it is. But it wins. The great ones understand that success comes from consistency, not from having the one brilliant idea that changes everything. They commit to their routine, and they stick with it.

2. They are subject matter experts.

Your customers don't need you anymore – they can find more information with a few clicks than most salespeople can deliver in a few hours. Combine this with most people not wanting to invest their time with salespeople, and I’m sure you can see a scenario in which you become an order-taker – unless you do something about it.

With all the technology out there, and more coming tomorrow, customers are overwhelmed by the noise. They are desperate for someone who can tell them exactly what they need to do – someone who has made the mistakes, seen the solutions, and can guide them through the complexity. Someone they can trust. An expert.

If you're not perceived as the expert, you are competing on price and availability, and at that point, you are not really competing at all.

3. They understand humans.

As machine-to-human interactions continue to increase in the buying cycle, your customers’ desires for human interaction will dramatically increase, but they won’t realize it. Like the proverbial toad that gets boiled one degree at a time, our customers will slowly evolve into isolated roles in which they hardly see any humans outside their departments.

They understand that a simple handshake and a 30-minute in-person conversation builds the kind of trust no algorithm can replicate. This trust leads to the desire to see you again. Eventually, your customers will rely on you more than technology. They may not understand why, but they feel better when they work with you. 

4. They use technology – especially AI tools – to buy back their time.

The ideas above require time that most salespeople don’t have, which is why the great ones of tomorrow will use AI tools and other technology to buy back their time. They will delegate dozens of hours every month to these tools while they spend more valuable time becoming subject-matter experts and having human-to-human interactions with customers and prospects.

They are not spending hours on proposals, presentation decks, or prospecting lists – technology handles that. They are out there, in front of customers, driving revenue. That's the job.