Celebrating National Salesperson Day: 5 Tips For Salespeople to Supercharge Their Success

As part of Solutions Review’s Contributed Content Series—a collection of contributed articles written by our enterprise tech thought leader community—Sean Evers, Pipedrive‘s VP of Sales & Partner, commemorates National Salesperson Day by sharing a few tips to help sales teams maximize their successes.

Did you know December 8 is National Salesperson Day? For those of us working in sales, it’s a timely milestone to celebrate our achievements and use the occasion to strategize our game plan for 2024. Sales is a tough job, but it can also be gratifying and financially lucrative—factors that make us want to stay nimble and beat our competition.

From one salesperson to another, on National Salesperson Day, I’m sharing five tips for becoming a better salesperson and giving yourself a good reason to celebrate the day. Notwithstanding, a stellar representative is always thinking about how to help out their current and prospective customers any day of the year.

1) Prioritize Professional Relationships: Deals Bloom From Familiar Faces

Devote time to relationship building, not only with your clients, prospects, and larger networks but also with your company colleagues who can help you close deals along the line. This proactive approach fosters more meaningful interactions with people important to your business and enhances the likelihood of making valuable connections that could lead to a sale down the road.

Don’t overlook the importance of strengthening your internal working relationships. For example, shore up any gaps between your sales and marketing teams. Sales and marketing need to work together; marketing brings in the leads, and sales converts them. If they’re out of sync, you could end up with a marketing team that isn’t sure, which leads to bringing in a sales department that can’t convert leads effectively because they aren’t a good fit.

However, businesses with well-integrated sales and marketing departments are almost twice as likely to meet their growth goals. Regular check-ins between these pivotal teams break down silos and keep people on track to deliver on shared objectives so that when a hot prospect is ready, everyone is primed to close the deal quickly. As we celebrate National Salesperson Day, let the spirit of collaboration infuse your relationships and remember the cliche: there’s no “I” in “team.”

2) Be Curious and Interested in What People Are Saying

The stereotype is that salespeople like to talk a lot, and we do! However, excellent salespeople are active listeners before they start talking. It’s important to be genuinely interested. This means you are listening and curious about how a person’s business works, their role, the organizational structure, and key objectives for the next 12 months. You have to ask great questions with warmth and curiosity. By being curious, your clients feel heard, understood, and valued. And you’ll better understand someone’s pain points and be in a smarter position to offer them solutions.

3) Use Data to Drive the Next Steps and Shape Your Sales Approach

Using data to understand the customer or specific industry is tremendously helpful. There are many tools that can now provide insight into a prospect or customer. For example, when C-Suite announcements are made, does this impact your relationship? Does it create a risk or new opportunity?

Data is a powerful tool in our sales kits because access to data can help address the issue of little to no qualified leads. Having a fantastic product for your niche won’t yield results if you’re targeting the wrong audience. Focusing on a small group of highly qualified, already interested leads proves to be a better use of resources than a larger number that doesn’t fit your target market.

Pursuing poor-fit leads can waste valuable resources and negatively impact sales productivity. Proficient CRMs provide analytics tools and reporting that can transform customer data into actionable insights. Instead of manually tracking every lead your team contacts, consider running a conversion report using CRM analytics. This report can reveal crucial details such as which deals are closed, how they were closed, and the origin of those leads.

CRM software encompasses sales productivity tools like customizable dashboards, pipeline management, and lead scoring. These tools offer a comprehensive solution for reviewing and tracking all the information necessary to bolster your sales pipeline.

4) Commit to Continuous Learning and Up Your Skills Proficiency

It’s a good idea to continue ongoing training, coaching, and mentorship along your career trajectory. Learning about new technologies, familiarizing yourself with market trends, and changing customer buying habits will make you a more informed professional. Consider programs like remote coaching to aid your development, or actively seek out a mentor to consult regularly, someone who also spends much of their time on the road.

Take a cue from your highest-performing peers and watch what they do to learn ways to mirror their techniques. Ask yourself what sets them apart. Examine their strengths closely, and explore ways to incorporate their successful strategies into your methods. Likewise, ask people you admire how they have handled setbacks and overcome failure. Read all the sales self-help books you can find, and keep abreast of industry media to learn new things and reinforce what you already know as good practices.

5) Get Better with Time Management

Prioritize time management. Use automated technology to streamline workflows and set realistic goals, ensuring your schedule is organized for maximum productivity. Your sales productivity impacts your business; higher productivity increases revenue. However, if you’ve hit a slump or plateau, it can impact profitability in the opposite direction. As you examine your performance, you may find areas in the buyer’s journey that present roadblocks. An overly drawn-out sales process might cause potential customers to become frustrated, lose interest, and back out midway. If you discover that’s a problem, you’ll want to focus on strategies that cut down the time spent at each stage of the funnel. Or even remove stages from your process altogether if they don’t help.

One of the most common obstacles to sales productivity is time; reps don’t have enough to spend on selling. Administrative tasks and meetings cut into the time a representative would otherwise have to do their primary job. Streamline repetitive tasks like emails and data entry that often take up a large portion of a sales rep’s day despite not yielding revenue or being directly related to our work.

Final Thoughts

By focusing on relationship building, mastering active listening, using data, committing to continuous learning, and improving with time management, you can ensure a deserving celebration of your contributions to the business world on National Salesperson Day.

As we navigate our sales goals, we must stay on top of our game. Let’s make sure our efforts are not only effective but efficient. If we ever fall short of expectations, the key is to identify and address those weak points head-on. I believe in supporting each other, including providing the coaching necessary to implement new and more effective methods. On National Salesperson Day, let’s keep pushing boundaries and achieving great wins together!