What makes a good sales person

What makes the difference between a consistent productive sales person and the rest of the pack?

First you must have leadership from the management team in support, training, sales tools and accountability. Sales persons must have drive, personality, and ability to listen, a process, and technology and follow up skills to the sale and after the sale. Above all a sale person must be able to translate what the customer wants in feature to benefits. Many sales persons sell features and not the benefit of that feature to the customer.

I asked one of my sales persons to role-play and do a walk around, which we filmed. Rosanne a new sales person played the customer, while Richard played the seasoned sales person.  Her questions were about safety benefits, child seat anchors, mileage consumption and the price. Richard started on the safety benefit of five mile an hour bumpers and then proceeded to go over every feature like a robot. It was clear when we reviewed the video that he knew every feature but only mentioned one benefit. He did not listen or retain what she wanted to know. He was instructed to treat it like a real up but never got her last name or contact information. It was a lesson for all the staff about what not to do.

This happened in 1983, and it is when I decided that using technology had a place in the automobile business. At the same time I started using computers to follow up and calculated deals, it was the beginning of AutoRaptor.  The letters CRM had no meaning for car people even though customer follow up via paper was a common practice.  We were using NADA Sales Track, which was my introduction to the world of data management.  The Management team created structure and a process using the current technology. Marginal sales person got better and good sales person became great sales persons. It was a team effort to bring out the best in each sales person. AutoRaptor is not just a CRM, it is a process.