This document provides an overview of common sales mistakes and how to improve sales skills. It discusses 13 key skills and traits that are important for sales success: readiness, knowledge, rapport, prospecting, qualifying, presenting, closing, objections, customer service, administration, attitude, drive, and influencing. Some common mistakes include lack of readiness, knowledge, or proper rapport building skills among salespeople. High or low scores on these traits can also indicate issues. Regular skills assessment, training, and support can help salespeople improve.

1. ‘Can your frontline salespeople really sell?
Are you making these
13 sales mistakes?
This extended report covers:
• 2 big myths about sales people
• 13 very common sales mistakes
• 13 sales training tips; and
• 13 secrets of top salespeople
Grab a cupper and a highlighter ...
and enjoy Andrew Priestley’s report.
The award winning Sales Profile
measures how you rate in 13 skills
linked to high performance in a high
value, multi-step sale. It shows you
exactly what’s working and what isn’t.
It’s incredibly useful information ...
but you have to take the test!
H H H H H
“There is nothing else as good as the Sales Profile anywhere.”

2. 2 Big Myths about Selling
Two Myths
Recently I was chatting with a sales manager working in the
highly competitive pharmaceuticals industry. His biggest
concern is salespeople who say they can sell … but can’t.
His biggest frustration is the attrition rate and turnover of
sales people.
At the opposite end of the spectrum is the owner of a
fencing contractor and supply company that struggles to
find good salespeople for a product that almost sells itself!
It seems that good sales people are hard to find.
This is a myth for two reasons.
Myth #1: The ability to sell is one skill.
When people talk about sales and selling they infer that the
ability to sell is just one skill. In fact the ability to sell in a high
value, frontline sales role is the combination of at least ten
skills – and in varying degrees - depending on what you sell
and your unique sales process. And all of that has to be
underpinned by a positive attitude and a high drive to
succeed in a frontline sales role.
Myth #2 Good sales people are born that way.
You know how it goes. Sales people are born with the gift of
the gab or the ability to sell ice to eskimos. You’ve either got it
or you haven’t. That sort of thing.
In fact, the research shows us that the best sales people are
highly trained and receive ongoing training. That is more
predictive of success in a sales role. And typical well trained
people outperform so called raw talent.
Having worked with a diverse range of industries and
thousands of salespeople I am convinced that the primary
reason sales people fail is because of poor or wrong sales
training, a lack of support; a poor product; or a sales
process that is mismatched to the buying context.
And it doesn’t matter how good a salesperson you are if
protocols or laws restrict your ability to sell. As an example,
the tendering process may not permit you to close a
prospective client.
So even if good sales people may be hard to find there is a
ready supply of people who can be trained to become
proficient sales people provided you can clearly identify
exactly what training and support is required.
The problem is most people have an inflated opinion of
their own skill set; and most employers guess the skill set
when hiring.
The Sales Profile is specifically designed to remove this
guesswork, conjecture and self flattery. Now you can check
if you are any good in sales and where you specifically need
training or coaching.
What exactly are top sales people doing that makes them
top sellers?
I was formally trained to sell prestige real estate. But I soon
discovered that not all that was taught in the classroom
worked in the field. And because I was on 100% commission
I started on a quest to discover what tactics, techniques,
skills and systems actually do work with real people in real
situations.
I also started to research where the sales tools and tech-
niques I had been taught had come from.
As a result I developed a sales profiling tool for sales people
called the Sales Profile.
Since then I have gone on to provide sales training with
companies world wide. An important aspect of that success
has been profiling of the sales skills of frontline sales people
in order to give them the most bespoke feedback and sales
training possible.
This article explores the key findings of that long-term study
and what subsequently appears in the Sales Profile.
The Problem with Learning from‘The Best’
You need to understand that most sales trainers totally
believe that what they are teaching works. But as I
discovered most sales trainers have no idea where their
techniques and tactics actually came from.
And most sales people have no independent measure of
what works. They ask you to rely on their anecdotal success
stories - often other people’s success stories which have
been repackaged as their own.
Research driven
I am qualified in psychology and there is a maxim that is
shared with the medical profession: do no harm.
This should apply to selling as well!
There is a rigour in psychology that demands that any
concept we suggest will benefit others. Psych degrees insist
you are well-read and that you dig very deep into the back-
ground of concepts and practices you believe to work.
Well sales and selling has such a background, too.
Every sales technique you can think of has a pedigree.
Someone, somewhere came up with it. It just might surprise
you what that pedigree is.
For example, many of the sales techniques you and I were
trained in were lifted directly from print advertising. It was
assumed that what worked in print must work in face–to-
face selling.

3. 10 Sales Skills and 3 Sales Drivers
That fallacy was disproved nearly 100 years ago but I was
still being taught these print based sales techniques nearly
70 years later and wondering why they weren’t working.
I thought it was me! I thought I was no good at selling.
Sales training 1860s
Even though we’ve been selling forever we only started to
formalise sales training around the 1860s.
We can now make more stuff to sell
As the industrial revolution took off the ability to mass
produce meant we could produce more than we could
consume. By necessity we had to sell more.
Household income trebled
By 1901, household incomes and disposable income had
trebled (USA). This meant people had more money to spend.
The big three fund some research
By 1915, three industries - real estate, automobiles and
insurance – all big-ticket items - required sales systems
designed to move more product
In the early 1920s, the real estate and insurance industries
commissioned studies into selling and in 1922, a notable
psychologist E K Strong at Standford University produced a
landmark study into sales and selling. Essentially, he collated
as much information as he could into the history of sales
and performed a meta analysis of the available top selling
sales training programmes of the day, and then issued a
report.
What Strong found
Strong identified a small range of robust sales skills that
appear in just about any high value, multi-step sale such as
knowledge, prospecting, qualifying, presenting, closing,
objections handling. Subsequent research continues to
merely replicate Strong’s findings.
I have added one or two aspects to this list of skills based
on information that Strong did not consider in the 1920s
(readiness, rapport, customer service, administration); and I
have placed the skills in the optimum order that has been
commonly observed in just about any sale.
What’s new?
What is new is that skills alone are not predictive of sales
success. I have identified three moderators to sales success:
attitude, drive and the ability to influence. I think the most
important being the drive to succeed in a sales role.
High Drive Low Skills
As I typically see, someone with low scores on sales skills
but high drive to succeed will usually outsell someone who
is highly skilled but has low drive to succeed.
The best configuration obviously is high drive and high
skills.
13 Traits
I looked at many sales programmes. One such programme
had 84 sales skills but practically, as a coach or trainer where
would you even start? What I found is those 84 skills distil
down to about ten key skills.
So here are the common sales skills and in the most
common order:
• Readiness
• Knowledge
• Prospecting
• Rapport
• Qualifying
• Presenting
• Closing
• Objections
• Customer Service
• Administration
But I also discovered three tendencies that moderate those
skills. They are:
• Attitude
• Drive
• Influencing
How the Sales Profile works
The Sales Profile rates your strengths in those 13 traits on a
scale on zero to 100%. Optimum scores range 70 - 80%
You do not want 100%. Here’s why.
However, you do not want to score 100% because at that
level you are unselling people. Very high scores look like the
stereotype pushy salesperson!
Very low scores <25%
Very low scores suggest much more training and closer
supervision is required. For example, it is a dumb idea to
hire a sales person and then leave them to their own
devices. I have repeatedly seen the trail of damage an
unsupervised low performer can wreak on a business.
Ideally, you want to score around 75% on each trait.
So let’s look at each trait.

4. Readiness, Knowledge and Rapport
Readiness
Mistake#1 You are not ready to sell OR you put someone in
the field who is just not ready to sell
A lot of salespeople are simply not ready for frontline selling.
They are given a territory and a minimum of training, and
left to there own devices. When they fail to convert sales
they are fired.
If your sales people aren’t ready you are wasting time and
money and there is a quantifiable opportunity cost.
So what is readiness?
Readiness means you feel sufficiently ready to start
independently selling with the minimum of supervision.
Readiness is linked to the drive to succeed in frontline sales.
In short, you feel confident enough in your own skills and
abilities to pick up a phone, go visit a prospect, gather
information, qualify and present and ask for a sale.
Readiness applies throughout your sales career because
things change. As you know some sales people can lose
their edge. For example, from 2007 to 2015 we experienced
the global financial crisis. A lot of markets dried up and a lot
of high performing sales people suddenly experienced the
shock that they couldn’t sell anymore.
You need to check your Readiness score and the score of
your sales people. A low readiness score will potentially
diminish any of the other scores even if other skill scores are
high.
Sales Training Tip: Simply ask your sales people,“Do you feel
ready to sell?”
Knowledge
Mistake #2 You simply lack knowledge
Again, too many sales people are given a basic overview
of the features, advantages and benefits of a product or
service and are then expected to sell it with confidence.
They often lack sales aids, ongoing training and rarely are
they monitored or supervised in situ.
Contrast this with Apple’s pre-launch sales training for the
iWatch. Sales people received two solid weeks of training
and two hours of coaching per week ongoing! Why would
Apple invest in that level of training unless it worked?
But in most scenarios I encounter sales people receive
minimal training. They don’t learn about their products or
services, warranties, guarantees or related marketing.
They know little about customers or market places.
They rarely know what the competition is doing or even
what laws they are required to observe.
If your people lack knowledge they will always under
perform and you will see that reflected in the revenues.
So it goes without saying that much of what makes
someone feel ready to sell is their knowledge of sales
theory, products, services, processes, customers, markets
and competitors.
A high score on knowledge says you might know a lot -
in theory - but you may not be applying what you know.
Only your sales results will prove that reality.
A low score always indicates the need for regular on-going
training. Note: you do not need to be a walking Wikipedia -
you need to know enough to feel ready to sell.
Sales Training Tip: Again ask a simply question. Do you know
enough about our products and services etc to sell with
confidence?
Rapport
Mistake #3 Not knowing what‘rapport’is and how to
establish it
Before you read on take a moment to consider what you
think rapport is and means. And ask your sales people.
I bet they agree rapport building is conducive for selling.
But how do you build rapport? Extensive research shows
that what most people consider to be rapport building is
actually annoying to most customers! It lands as insincere
and overly familiar.
What we know is: Rapport is greatly misunderstood.
Rapport building is considered to be a staple of frontline
selling because it is intended to put someone at ease.
Drive
Low
High
Skills
HighLow
Train/Replace
Train/
Monitor/
Supervise
Monitor/
Supervise
Monitor/
Measure
Figure 1: Drive and Skills Matrix

5. Prospecting and Qualifying
However many sales trainers make a hash of teaching
rapport building skills. Sales people can emerge with a
personality by-pass. Rapport building often lands as
saccharine and insincere to invasive to downright high on
the creepy scale when done badly.
Very high scores land as insincere, overly familiar, time
wasting to manipulative. Very low scores land as cold and
remote and engender distrust.
What typically passes for Rapport is feigning interest in
someone’s hobbies. You are taught to scope a customer’s
office and start a conversation about some unique item
such as a trophy or a painting to get them talking.
That typically backfires. For example, imagine if they have
chatted with three other salespeople recently who all said,
‘Tell me about this golf trophy’.
This might be why a potential customer seems reluctant to
make small talk.
If you are in frontline sales you need to know how you rate
in Rapport building.
Sales Training Tip: Ask your sales people to explain and then
demonstrate‘rapport’. Then observe who seemed to be
good at rapport building and try to identify what they said
or did that worked. Then test that in the field!
Prospecting
Mistake #4 Hating prospecting and cold calling
Most sales people I’ve met hate prospecting. They confuse
the term with cold calling which they equate with doing
something distasteful or manipulative. They certainly don’t
see that they have a legitimate right to enquire if someone
needs their goods or services. And they certainly don’t
recognise the enormous opportunities to gather frontline
intel that can be used to shape a better offering. Instead
they see prospecting as a numbers game rather than what
could easily be viewed as an important if not scientific
process.
Prospecting is essentially your ability to contact a warm or
cold lead and potentially get permission to commence a
sales conversation.
Very high prospecting scores look like indiscriminately
calling anyone with a pulse. It’s the churning and burning
leads typified by the sayings such as‘It’s a numbers game’.
“Some will, some won’t, so what?”That sort of thing.
Low scores suggest a fear of rejection and indicate what we
call‘approach avoidance’. Either way, low and high scores
suggest more training and closer supervision.
People who struggle to prospect invariably have had no
ongoing training or monitoring. Or measuring.
For example, very few sales people understand their call
ratios. I make five calls a day, 40 weeks a year, because I want
25 clients each year. An that’s how many calls it takes to get
25 clients a year.
By the way be very wary of‘no prospecting’systems. Believe
me we still have to engage prospects some how. Usually
these hands off systems come with a hefty software and
ongoing maintenance, training and upgrade price tag.
It is the opposite of believing in the sales leads fairy where
you come to work every day where 25 new customers
magically appear wanting to buy. (Marketing is a form of
prospecting).
Sales Training Tip Ask your team what prospecting means,
where qualified leads come from and how to prospect. This
makes for an invaluable training session. You will identify
skills and prejudices.
Qualifying
Mistake #5 Thinking customers hate being qualified
Customers hate it when you ask them questions, right?
It’s intrusive and presumptuous and manipulative. Right?
Wrong. The reality is most customers actually want the
help and even input from a salesperson. In fact most
people appreciate it when a salesperson takes the time to
understand their wants and needs so that they make a more
informed purchasing decision – no matter how big or small
the sale.
But what passes for qualifying is at best guesswork and
conjecture.
Technically, most sales people assume what a customer
wants. Then they ask questions that try and steer the
customer towards what the have already decided! And
that’s what customer’s hate even if they don’t realise what’s
happening themselves.
As far back as the 1920s, EK Strong stated that the
obligation of a salesperson was to identify the explicit needs
of the customer and only sell to those explicit needs.
Somewhere, it got lost in the translation because most sales
people anticipate what your implied needs are then assume
the sale. But often they are wrong.
Importantly, guessing a customer’s needs does not work
anywhere as effectively in a frontline sale as spending time
letting a customer tell you what they explicitly want.

6. Closing and Handling Objections
Top sellers qualify for explicit requirements rather than force
a sale that approximates the customer’s needs.
The test for mis-selling is a poor closing rate and sales
reversals.
Sales Training Tip: A lot of research was done around record-
ing sales presentations and measuring who did most of the
talking. Poor sellers actually speak six times more than the
customer. Top sellers still talk but only when it is time to
talk. So when is it time to talk and when should the cus-
tomer talk? This is a good training question to ask your sales
people.
Closing
Mistake #7: Fearing the‘close’
Closing is asking for the business. Poor salespeople hate to
ask for the business. Top sellers ask for the business.
When should you close. Whenever! I recently saw two sales
where the sale was an identical product. The person who
made the most sales attempted to close more often. I am a
big fan of the trial close because it lets me and the customer
know if we are getting warm.
Customers actually like it because it helps them check their
explicit problems and needs and the strength of their
commitment to resolve those issues via a purchase.
Closing is the holy grail of sales trainers for years. There are
hundreds of books and courses on closing.
When I was doing my formal sales training we had to learn
and memorise about 40 closing techniques. There was the
Hand grenade, The Porcupine Close, and the Puppy Dog Close
etc. Guess what? They work. They really do, but closing at
this level can look and feel grimy.
Plus customers are much smarter now. They know when
they are being closed. And the law has caught up with
closing techniques by issuing Cooling Off periods. We now
assess closing in terms of returns and sales reversals.
Closing in fact is a key part of any sale and good sales
people are trial closing throughout their presentation.
You are checking in with the customer and trial closing
repeatedly throughout a sale whether you realise it or not.
The customer’s responses are shaping your presentation
and steering the questions you ask.
Closing courses aim to make this natural transaction
conscious because poor closers miss obvious selling cues.
Low scores land as a fear to ask for the sale.
Of course, it can go over board too. Very high scores land as
scripted, pushiness and manipulation.
You definitely will get value from the Closing score.
Again, closing simply means asking for the sale. And in my
opinion a close is actually a wonderful opening especially if
I end up with a client that continues to do business with me
ongoing.
Sales Training Tip: Ask for the sale. As my nana used to say, if
you don’t ask the answer is always‘No’.
Objections
Mistake #8 Hating customer objections
This will sound counter intuitive but when a customer
objects its actually a good sign.
Whenever I train a salesperson I ask them to collect
objections. When I was training to sell prestige real estate I
was told to memorise 24 objection handling techniques but
I found it too confusing. In the end, I gave up and decided
to collect objections instead. I collected 168 objections over
six weeks. What I discovered was all of those objections
distilled down to five basic categories.
Once I knew those five objections it was very easy to under-
stand a customer genuine concerns and address them. After
a while I built those five objections into my presentation
and prevented them from even arising in most cases.
You’d think objections comes before closing but in fact it
comes after a close. Closing is simply asking for the busi-
ness. If they customer is not ready to buy you will get an
objection which if you handle results in a sale – usually.
Most high value sales go through a cycle of trial close, ob-
jection, trial close, objection etc until the customer agrees
on a purchase.
You should note that many high value sales will not include
a closing or objections phase because you have to submit
your proposal to an independent bid assessor via a formal
tendering process.
I once coached some engineers who had terrible closing
and objection scores but it didn’t matter because all of their
proposals had to be vetted via a tendering process.
A huge insight that I learned years ago is that skills are just
skills but they have to matched to your sales process to be
meaningful. So a lot of sales people are out there teaching
closing despite it not being a feature of their clients sales
process! (NB: Strong did not account for high value
multi-step sales or the tendering process in his studies).

7. Service and Administration
That said, knowing your closing and objections scores are
important.
Sales Training Tip: Collect objections for six weeks and try
and categorise them. For example a lot of objections are
about money (the price) and value getting mixed up. See
what you can discover.
Service
Mistake #9 Thinking service comes later
Customer service comes after the sale, right? No, the service
cycle starts right at the very start of the sale, continues dur-
ing the sales and then after the sale. You are servicing from
the get-go.
We know that customer care and customer service are key
elements before, during and after any sale now. Customer
care is anything you do to help a customer make a buying
decision and customer service is what you do after a sale to
maintain the sale or resolve any post-sale issues.
High scores on service suggest you will over-service a
customer and while that is counter-intuitive to most sales
books you can actually over-service a customer into
becoming a sales reversal or a lapsed customer or a
negative advocate for your business. You kill the customer
with kindness. It can look like pestering a customer.
Secondly, you over service to the degree that you kill any
profit in the sale.
Low scores show up as neglect and care and service
grievances. Importantly, at low levels a customer is actually
an interruption to your day! Often when I work with sales
teams I pick up a palpable sense of angst if not animosity to
customers. This is true where low service scores exist. If you
have a culture of disparaging customers behind their backs
then be warned. Customers actually pick it up directly or
indirectly. Be warned.
Rate your customer service on a scale of 1-10. If your score
9 and 10s then you are doing something the customer likes.
6-8 and your customer is actually ambivalent. And 1-5 the
customer is actually having a negative experience and will
actually go away and tell others you deliver bad service! (I
didn’t make this up. Its called the Net promoter Score.)
Sales Training Tip: Google the term Net Promoter Score and
be prepared to be learn what top companies do to ensure
customers are satisfied to refer both you and your products
and services.
And why ... and why not!
Administration
Mistake #10 Thinking the sale concludes with the sale
No, the sale concludes once the paperwork is done –
accurately- and sent and the money is banked. I am stunned
at just how bad good salespeople are at administration.
They love the sale and hate the paperwork part of it.
Administration is all about the accurate processing of a
sale at all stages i.e., quoting, ordering, invoicing, shipping.
Incredibly, despite amazing technology and CRM systems
sales people are still incredibly lax around the administra-
tion of a sale.
High scores are usually scenarios that involve massive
amounts of annoying pen work and paper chasing and
hoops customers (and salespeople) have to jump through;
and someone with a high admin score usually wastes time
dotting I’s and crossing ts and double handling paperwork.
Low scores are usually forgotten orders, delivery mistakes,
errors and omissions that frustrate customers, suppliers,
admin staff and sales people. A low score says you make
mistakes in the are of admin and that could be costing you
customers.
Sales Training Tip: Spend time and identify exactly how a
sale is a administered in your business. You may be shocked
to find its over administered or gaping holes!
Take the test now
You can take the Sales Profile test right now by clicking on
www.thesalesprofile.com

8. Attitude and Drive
The three moderators
Understand that above list of skills are familiar to most sales
people. Improving skills is the sales trainers stock-in-trade
and they aim to lift your skill set in these key areas.
But the Sales Profile assesses three key performance drivers
too. They are attitude, drive and influence.
Good skills training should improve your attitude to sales,
lift your drive to succeed in a frontline sales role and
positively impact your ability to influence others changes.
But interestingly, if I just focus on improving your attitude,
your drive to succeed in a frontline sales role and your
ability to influence others your sales skills will improve.
So the drivers impact the skills.
For example, someone with high drive to succeed in sales
and low skills can and will usually out-perform someone
with high skills but low drive.
The Sales Profile uniquely assesses both sales skills and
performance drivers elements together because the
moderators are highly predictive of sales success.
With that in mind, let’s explore the three sales performance
drivers.
Attitude
Mistake #11 You need to stay positive all the time
You do but there is a tipping point where a positive atti-
tude becomes insincere and flaky. If you are trying to hard
to please and putting on a happy face your customer sees
it for what it is. They actually distrust it when you are too
pumped.
So how high is too pumped? Well the Sales Profile says once
you tip over 85% you at risk of being too pumped. At 95%
you are probably living and breathing motivational CDs.
Attitude is essentially about the level of positivity and
optimism required for sustained success in a frontline role
if not life. You need a positive attitude but here’s where
psychology can help.
Very high scores on attitude land as over enthusiasm and
flakiness. You come across as too pumped and insincere. Too
optimistic and living in la-la land. A lot of MLM companies
used to do high end rah-rah sales training sessions akin to
a religious rally where the team are evangelised. Research
doesn’t actually support this as effective. In fact we all know
quiet achievers who appear to have the IQ of a geranium
and the personality of an old shoe.
Low scores are indicative of negativity and optimism which
are the salesperson’s enemy. Negative top sellers usually have
a hot product that sells in spite of their attitude.
Because this is a moderator it is a very important tendency
to review.
Sales Training Tip: Over the next week pay attention when
you are feeling in your zone and your customer likes it too.
You may find you are happy and positive but genuine and
low key.
Drive
Mistake #12 Thinking all you need are sales skills
I have asked many sales people to rate their own skills and
then looked at their results. Simple Target, Actual and
Variance (TAV) or Actual, Mean and Rolling Mean (AMR) stats
will provide the reality check. If skills were the answer I’d
push skills but we know that you need the drive to succeed
in sales as well.
Drive reflects your drive to succeed in a sales role and it
includes your resilience and determination to push through
set backs and obstacles.
A very high drive score indicates you are single-issued
focused and will not take no for an answer and this lands as
intimidating. You used to be able to push a customer that
hard but those days are pretty much gone if not illegal.
Customers today will rate their experience on public social
media sites and there is nowhere to hide once that review
hits cyberspace. Its there forever.
A very low score says frontline sales is not for you unless and
until you do extensive ongoing training.
Right now we are in a season where you need a high drive
to succeed in frontline sales.
Sales Training Tip: Get your cell phone and turn on the voice
recorder and answer this question: why do I want to be in
sales? Why sales? Keep answering the same question over
and over for at least 20 minutes. See what comes out.

9. Influence and two big tips
Influence
Mistake #13 Thinking influencing is somehow the gift of the
gab, ad-libbing or winging it
Influencing is not an ad hoc skill. Its not ad-libbing, coercing
or trickery. You actually need to be well prepared to
influence. The most influential people are actually quite
empathetic and considerate. They listen and reflect on what
is being said and what they know and their responses
demonstrate care – and that’s what makes them influential.
Influencing is the ability to influence others and
incorporates listening, relating and includes preparedness
and empathy. Basically, your success is dependent on your
ability to influence others and to that degree you will
succeed (or not).
A very high score suggests pushiness but it also suggests
you will do all the talking and appear as manipulative and
self-centred and having an agenda.
A very low score suggest you are timid or ill-prepared and
usually the customer feels embarrassed and uneasy about
your lack of spark and awkwardness. Importantly, they will
usually fail to buy because they lack confidence in you and
your company.
Sales Training Tip: Look up‘influencing’. Top sellers are very
influential. It’s a deep skill. Study influence.
Bonus Mistake:
The skills are not isolated, they interact
Understand, that most employers, sales people, sales
coaches and sales trainers look at these skills and
tendencies in isolation as if they are separate.
Ironically, when someone says they are good at sales they
are doing the opposite – merging these skills as if they were
one skill. We know that they relate to one another and so
while the sales profile gives you rating on these items
individually – you are encouraged to carefully look for
connections. Start with obvious ones like qualifying and
closing. Or presenting and qualifying.
For example, the moderators impact the skills.
But a low attitude will impact your ability to influence
and drive. And poor influencing will impact your ability
to present.
So you are looking for connections and relationships.
My biggest tip
You need to view the skills report as it relates to your sales
process. I can’t emphasise this enough.
I repeatedly see companies receive comprehensive sales
training in all skills where they probably only needed sales
training in one or two aspects.
I once sat in on a three-day sales training for an engineering
firm. Two days were devoted to closing and objections but
the tendering process prevents closing and handling
objections. So they didn’t need that training.
Ironically, most engineers are brilliant presenters but
struggle with qualifying. So they will over-deliver
information.
I recently met a sales professional who only needs training
in one skill who at glumly then resentfully in a three-day
workshop feeling his time was better spent out in the field.
He was calculating the money he was losing! He only came
alive for the 30 minutes that touched on the area he felt he
needed support in. I know this because when he completed
the Sales Profile it showed exactly what he knew to be true.
He would have done better with a sales coach who focused
attention on that area.
You need to match skills to your process otherwise you will
waste time, money and opportunities by getting this wrong.
Strong did not address this issue in his study.
Lastly, the Sales Profile can help you better determine how
to measure success and this is a topic for another time. So ...
Should you take the Sales Profile test?
I have to say‘yes’. But you’ve read this report – what do you
think? Do you think you would benefit by completing this
test?
The repeated feedback we get from sales people is they
were glad they did so. I have had top sales trainers say,
“There is nothing else like this out there that gives this feed-
back as accurately and usefully as the Sales Profile.
One client said they had looked for eight months and tried
many systems but couldn’t find anything to compare.
Companies that use the Sales Profile repeatedly say there is
nothing this comprehensive and this easy to understand.
That’s why it’s used worldwide. And in Spanish.
For individuals it is a perfect tool that will give you a clear
heads up on your sales skills and recommendations on what
training or support is needed next and why.

10. Take the Test
“High performing salespeople are like rocket fuel for your business!”
The Sales Profile
The Sales Profile measures your drive to succeed
and how you rate against 13 skills associated with
high performance in frontline sales.
You get easy to understand graphs of your results,
an appraisal of the 13 skills and bespoke feedback
to how you answered key questions.
Use your Sales profile to understand exactly what
is working and what needs fixing.
Importantly, your chart can be used to better
match your skills to the sales processes used
in your business.
If you are not completely satisfied you can ask
for a full refund and receive one with only one
question asked: How can we improve the Sales
Profile and make it even better?
If you are in Sales Training or Sales Recruitment
The Sales Profile is an excellent resource for your
clients especially if you are an individual trainer,
a sales training organisation, or coach or
Recruitment Company.
Get your personalised detailed report of 13 high performance selling
skills and the measure of your drive to succeed.
White-labelling
It is available as a private-label service that can
be badged with your own corporate branding.
For more info please email
privatebranding@thesalesprofile.com
www.thesalesprofile.com
If you manage a Sales Team
Get your team members to take ownership and
responsibility by them highlighting their own
profile. Quickly assess individuals sales skills and
drive and identify appropriate training needs.
For large numbers of sales individuals and teams
we offer a bespoke reporting service where training
needs can be grouped and identified. For further
info please email
teams@thesalesprofile.com
Referrers and Affiliates Link
Every person who completes the Sales Profile auto-
matically receives and individualised affiliate link.
If you share the personalised link below you will
earn a small fee from any referrals that go on to
complete the Sales Profile. Please share:
http://bit.ly/1MNXzKg