How Super Salespeople Succeed or Fail... (The next part of The 4 Types of Successful Entrepreneurs)

How Super Salespeople Succeed or Fail

This is based on the research of Prof. John Miner, who studied the successes and failures of 100 people who took an entrepreneurship course at the State University of New York in Buffalo. This is a summary of the results of his research.

In his research, he found he could divide the successful entrepreneurs generally into four categories: Personal Achievers, Super Salespeople, Real Managers, and Expert Idea Generators....

We saw how Personal Achievers Succeed or Fail, and below we'll see what Prof. John Miner's research uncovered regarding the success routes for Super Salespeople....

In order to succeed, Super Salespeople need to sell, as this is what comes naturally to them and it's what they do well.

Super Salespeople typically find sales and marketing at an early age, and often become career salespeople. They may have parents who were in sales as well.

Super Salespeople tend to have many of the following characteristics....

1. Capacity to understand and feel with another
2. Desire to help others
3. Belief that social processes are very important
4. Need to have strong positive relationships with others
5. Belief that a sales force is crucial to carrying out company strategy

Essentially the way to business success for Super Salespeople, according to those Prof. Miner studied, consists of focusing on the following....

1. Learning how to sell and learning about the product or service being sold.

2. Sticking to selling. This is their strength, and it's a vital part of business, so they do well if they continue to focus on selling.

3. Providing for backup to handle other aspects of the business. That is, they often do best if they delegate the other various tasks in business.

There are also traps along the way for super salespeople which they have to watch out for. Here are the traps Super Salespeople ought to watch out for....

1. The Super Salesperson lacks the necessary knowledge. The necessary knowledge here is mainly the knowledge of your products and services. That way the effectiveness of selling those products and services can be enhanced.....

2. The Super Salesperson does not fully recognize his or her talents. Prof. Miner found that super salespeople are more likely to recognize their own talents than personal achievers are, though it is not always the case. However, once a Super Salesperson recognizes his or her strengths, then s/he can focus on utilizing these strengths....

3. The Super Salesperson is forced off the selling route. This problem may arise because other forces (like corporate officers in a corporate venture) may want the Super Salesperson to focus on other areas, such as management. This doesn't utilize the super salesperson's real talents. Super Salespeople may be vulnerable to this in particular since they want others to like them and to avoid conflicts.

4. Traps that arise as the firm grows larger..... The main trap here for Super Salespeople is that there is a limit to how much selling one person can do. The antidote to this is that at a particular stage in the firm's growth, the Super Salesperson may have to limit himself or herself to handling a set of key accounts, and hire other people to handle other accounts.

For more details and some examples, check out "The Four Routes to Entrepreneurial Success" by John B. Miner.

So we've talked about Personal Achievers and Super Salespeople.....

Next post: how "Real Managers" succeed or fail in business....