There are a few traits that successful sales organizations have in common. And they’re business aspects that you as a sales rep have significant sway over. For starters, according to Seleste Lunsford, writing for Selling Power, these organizations achieve 94% of their sales revenue goal. How does your company measure up in comparison? Even if your sales numbers don’t NEED a boost, you can still benefit from working on the traits successful sales reps share.

2 Traits Successful Sales Reps Share

They’re Primarily Customer-Centric

Even if your organization doesn’t have a customer-​centric culture, it’s still something you can work on for yourself. Lunsford says that being customer-​centric, “is more important to success than having a formal sales process.” This makes sense. Hopefully, you’ve come to realize that a cookie-​cutter approach to sales is a path to failed deals. Every prospect is an individual with differing needs and problems that need to be solved. Most reps use a formal sales process as an excuse to not personalize their sales pitch to each customer. Laziness is not one of the traits successful sales reps share.

At the end of the day, successful sales reps are those who focus on the prospect and their needs. Sales isn’t about making money; it’s about helping others. Your product or service can genuinely help someone make their business or life in general more successful. That should be the motivation behind every sales pitch, instead of zeroing in the prospect and making money. You’ll be more successful that way and, in turn, make more money along the way. That’s why customer-​centricity is one of the traits successful sales reps share: Because everyone involved wins.

They Provide Insight and Perspective

How confident are you that you are providing each of your prospects with insights and perspectives that are valuable to them? Because that’s one of the traits successful sales reps share. “65% of Level 3 organizations meet or exceed expectations in providing customers with thought leadership and perspectives to advance their thinking, while just 26% of those in Level 1 do the same,” Lunsford points out.

If your prospect knew everything about your product or service, they wouldn’t have bothered to schedule a sales meeting with you. They need advice on the best way to solve their problem or achieve their goal. Through their preliminary research, they know enough about the basics of what you’re offering that you have the potential to be their saving grace. However, they’ll quickly change their minds if your sales pitch only focuses on the bare bones data that they already researched themselves.

So, in your sales pitches going forward, don’t focus on your product’s features. Your prospects can read about those online. Instead, have a conversation about the prospect’s goals and problems. Once you know exactly what the prospect wants to achieve, you can use your expertise on your product to offer innovative solutions on how you can work together to help them. Your knowledge and insights into how prospects can use your product is worth much more to them than a list of the product’s features.