How To Be A Superstar Sales Professional by Manoj Sharma
January 5, 2009
Having worked with more than 50,000 professionals internationally, for the better part of a decade I’ve come across numerous Superstar Sales Professionals. Over time, it is quite easy to identify what these Superstar Sales Professionals have in common.
The following is a checklist you can use to see where you stand and what you need to do to be a Superstar Sales Professional.
However, before you start, please take note that a Superstar Sales Professional is not just a top performer. A Superstar Sales Professional is not just someone who delivers on the numbers; a Superstar Sales Professional is someone who delivers holistically beyond their numbers. And that is what makes them Superstars in their own right.
So let’s get started …
1) Do you commit to a super high sales target?
The top sales professionals across industries are a distinct breed from the average sales professional. While average sales professionals are trying their best to figure out how to hit their sales targets, the Superstar Sales Professionals have, on their own, increased their target by up to 10 times and are figuring out how to deliver on their super high sales targets.
Naturally, when they are taking on a bigger challenge, the smaller target that is expected of them is one that is easily hit.
2) Do you put your heart and soul into achieving your sales target?
Superstar Sales Professionals put everything into their sales targets. They wake up in the morning, living, eating and breathing their targets. They come in early and are raring to go. They have one burning question paramount in mind. “How do I exceed my sales targets today?”
I have, and I have also regularly seen the best sales professionals, sit in the office alone, long after everyone has gone home, silently going over their activities of the day. I’ve seen them looking desperate, figuring out what they need to do to improve tomorrow. Ultimately I’ve seen them go home with a tremendous sense of peace, confidence and an absolutely focused mind on what they need to accomplish tomorrow.
A Superstar Sales Professional is like a thoroughbred athletic, completely focused on going for the gold.
3) Are you a superb professional?
Professionals have a code or conduct – an ethical framework that they live their lives by. But a superb professional is much more than that.
Superb professionals are also principled, conscientious of their actions and polite to one and all. They are quick with a sorry if necessary. They are not caught up in their egos, do not strut their self-importance around and are gracious at heart.
Superstar Sales Professionals whether they have achieved superstar status or are still on their path, do their best to be generous, serene, magnanimous, appreciative and compassionate.
Most people forget that people don’t just buy products and services; they buy the people who are promoting those products and services too. One of the biggest secrets of a Superstar Sales Professional is that they genuinely connect with other human beings through the best of human qualities.
4) Do you focus on the “future now”?
A Superstar Sales Professional has to learn the lessons of the past to not repeat them in the future. Failing which the future becomes just another version of the past repeating itself. A Superstar Sales Professional has to embrace the mistakes they have made, not make excuses and avoid being in denial. They need to take responsibility for what has happened before, especially their disasters. They need to deal with them and then move forward.
Superstar Sales Professional also knows that in reality there is no future, except the future that is created now. Knowing this, they ensure they perform at their absolute best right here and right now, not saving their best for tomorrow. Superstar Sales Professionals are also not caught in procrastination. They have an urgency to seize the moment. They know the importance of doing productive, aligned work that brings them closer to their targeted results.
5) Do you sharpen yourself incessantly?
Superstar Sales Professional never rest on their laurels, they are always moving forward, forever working on their mind sets, skill sets and business sets.
To be a Superstar Sales Professional requires that you are first a communication superstar. After all, Sales is simply, communicating a point of view to achieve a mutually desirable result. From yet another angle, Sales is about leadership – leading people and assisting them to decide for themselves what would be in their best interest. So, leadership for a Sales Superstar is a mandatory skill set. Along those lines, follow the need to develop sophisticated negotiation and deal making skills and so on.
A Superstar Sales Professional never stops improving, never stops striving to be greater than they already are and never passes on an opportunity to sharpen himself / herself further.
6) Do you make service your motto?
While at the start of the day the Superstar Sales Professional is focused on the question, “How do I exceed my sales targets today?” during customer (I actually prefer to use the word “partner” instead) interactions, the Sales Superstar is entirely focused on, ““How can I best be of service here?”
Being of service is not about how well you smile, or saying things to appease the customer. While that may be of appropriate value, the degree to which you are in service is actually determined by the degree to which you are willing to put your customer’s interest over your own.
I know of a Superstar Sales Professional who after listening intently to his customers requirements, and knowing full well that he would not be able to fully serve his customers needs, actually told the customer that he would need to buy from a competitor. “Yes!” he gave up his sales commission, but I know for a fact, this particular customer not just goes back to him whenever he has any subsequent need, but also recommends numerous people to talk to him first too. Now that’s the value of service, and only something a Superstar Sales Professional secure in his value proposition would do.
7) Do you have a professional sales coach?
Nobody has ever gotten to the top of their field without a tremendous amount of professional assistance. You may not hear of it in open circles, but anyone who is someone today, has always kept close the counsel of other professionals and actively paid for their assistance.
If naturally gifted sports professionals need professional coaches to propel them to greatness, aren’t you being foolish by thinking that you don’t?
The truth is everybody has “blind spots”, huge areas that they are not aware of. Everybody can afford to improve their technical sales skills (the science of sales) and their non-technical sales skills (the art of sales). Everybody can benefit from the discipline of a structured one-to-one fully professionalized series of coaching sessions that address their personal needs.
Superstar Sales Professionals know that their investment of time and money in professional sales coaching propels them to new levels of competencies, which deliver exponential high results.
So, if you don’t have a Professional Sales Coach, consider getting yourself one. After all, getting to the top is one challenge, and to stay at the top is quite another.
So, how did you fair in relation to being a Superstar Sales Professional? What do you need to continue doing with greater diligence and what do you need to do that you presently are not?
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