Are Great Salespeople Born or Made ?

One debate in sales is about the impact of training versus selection in developing an effective sales force. Some observers maintain he best salespeople are born that way and are effective due to their personalities and interpersonal skills developed over a lifetime. Others conted that application of leading-edge sales techniques can make virtually anyone a sales star.

Take a position: the Key to developing an effective sales force is selection versus the Key to developing an effective sales force is training.

The debate about salespeople born or made was started long time ago and we still arguing which side is the best opinion to know the best salespeople until now. In my opinion salesperson can be made, because sales skill can be learned, but people with much more ability to emphatize, have a lot of networking and friendly, and also have great self-confidence to convincing people have shorter learning curve.

As a sales representative, they have to emphatize to the customers that he cares and understands to the people so they can stay connect with the prospecting buyers. When the world has changing fast, nowadays customers expect salespeople to have deep product knowledge and also ideas to improve the customer’s operations, so the company must give the salespeople incentive training. Great salesperson also trained to use their time efficiently. By gived training to manage time, they can increase their productivity. Training time varies with the complexity of the selling task. New methods of training are continually emerging, such as the use of audio or video tapes, CDs and CD-ROMs and programmed learning, distance learning, and even films. Some firms are now using role playing and sensitivity or emphaty training to help their sales force to identify with customers’ situations, feelings, and motivates. These demands have required companies to make much higher investment in sales training.

Of course after the company gives training, they also have evaluation session. One type of evaluation compares current performance with the past performance. The sales manager learn many things about the salesperson from their report of sales time by time. Even if effective in producing sales, the report may not rate high with customers. Success may come becauses competitors’ salespeople are inferior.

A salespeople also have an ability to link like experiences and similar data into predictable patterns, and this called modeling mind’s. Salespeople continually learn through the ongoing accumulation and consolidation of information from their sales calls and interactions with customers. From this knowledge base, salespeople can predict what will happen and what they should do. Modeling can be thought of as the engine that drives sales intuition. Modeling can be thought of as trying to find the what, when, where response — what you should do when you are in a particular circumstance where you have to act.

So selling is a skill, comparable to accounting or engineering: Specific actions, properly applied in a proscribed order, produce the best results. Given enough motivation from the senior, and learn from the experiences also. This driven to be a salesperson, but to be great salesperson they have to be supported with great personality, have an big sense of emphatize to know the customers feeling and situations, a dynamics person that can well-adapted with the fast change of situation and condition, and also have nice behavior and attitudes. This all drives to be a great salesperson.