Five Personality Traits of Top Sales Closers
By David Pearce, President, SalesTestOnline.com
What is THE most important sales skill? Very few sales managers would disagree that the ability to close the sale is the number one skill they seek in their sales people. Our latest study of proven sales closers clearly identifies the five unique personality traits that account for their sales success.
Over the last 30 years our company, SalesTestOnline.com has tested well over 750,000 sales people. Our clients vary greatly not only in business type but also in business size. The one thing they have in common, however, is that they all use our sales personality test to identify high potential in sales candidates.
This latest, in a series of studies, looks at the top 150 reps in a sales force of approximately 2000, selling a high-ticket real estate investment product. Sales leads were provided for the reps and they typically had only one meeting with the prospect to close the sale. Compensation is strongly incentive-based.
All top performing reps completed the SalesTestOnline.com sales personality test. Their sales test scores were tracked on the five personality trait drive scales briefly described below.
Assertiveness - Need for control. Competitiveness. Need to win. Ego drive.
Sociability - Need for interaction with others. Empathy and persuasiveness. Extroversion.
Patience - Need for stability and predictability. Initiative. Comfort with repetition and routine.
Dependence - Need for rules, structure, guidelines. Need for approval and security. Need for direction.
Emotional Control - Balance between logic and emotions. Impulsiveness vs. procrastination
The outcome presents an extremely clear picture of the personality traits of top sales closers. The results are as follows.
74% scored moderate to high on assertiveness
This indicates that they are highly competitive, dominant, authoritative, take-charge, risk oriented types with a need to "win", to be in control and to be recognized.88% scored high on sociability
This indicates that they are very extroverted, need lots of interaction are empathetic and can communicate very persuasively.86% scored low on patience
This indicates that they are very impatient, restless and pro-active, thrive on change/variety, are multi-taskers with a lot of nervous energy.72% scored moderate to low on dependence
This indicates that they are very independent, dislike rules, resist supervision, are weak with details, have very little fear of failure and are incentive motivated.85% scored moderate to low on emotional control
This indicates that they are quite spontaneous, at times a little impulsive but usually quite logical and disciplined.
Conclusion
These findings demonstrate very clearly identifiable traits in these top closers and many of the descriptions might ring true for your stronger closers as well. It would though, be a mistake to automatically assume that these are the traits you require in your sales candidates. Our experience tells us that because sales roles vary considerably their required personality traits also vary.
If you are interested in having us conduct a study in order to analyze the sales personality traits of your sales people then please let us know.
David Pearce is the President of SalesTestOnline.com. Established in 1986, SalesTestOnline.com is North America's #1 provider of sales personality tests as well as personality tests for sales positions used to evaluate sales employees for sales competency. SalesTestOnline.com has over 1400 satisfied customers (97% re-order rate) who use our personality sales test to measure sales aptitude assessment when hiring. Our online sales assessment test is customized to your unique criteria, fully automated, instantaneous, extremely accurate and very economical.