Harvard Business Review is arguably the most prestigious publication for business leaders and management thinkers. Here are a few of Steve W. Martin’s featured Harvard Business Review articles.

ARE TOP SALESPEOPLE BORN OR MADE?
My last article on the "Seven Personality Traits of Top Salespeople" was based on personality tests administered to 1,000 top business-to-business salespeople. The test results indicate that key personality traits directly influence top performers' selling styles, and, in turn, their success. However, the study also raises the perennial question, "Are top salespeople born or made?" In other words, must top salespeople be born with the prerequisite sales instincts, or can someone learn to become successful in sales without them?

Based upon my research, experience, and observations, I estimate over 70 percent of top salespeople are born with "natural" instincts that play a critical role in determining their sales success. Conversely, less than 30 percent of top salespeople are self-made — meaning, they have had to learn how to become top salespeople without the benefit of these natural abilities. In addition, for every 100 people who enter sales without natural sales traits, 40 percent will fail or quit, 40 percent will perform at near average, and only 20 percent will be above average (These figures vary by industry and the complexity of products sold).

Based on the figures above, the real question that should be asked is, "What determines whether or not a self-made salesperson will become successful?" While it's easy to recite a laundry list of general reasons for success (hard work, persistence, intelligence, integrity, empathy, etc.), my experience in the field and the research I've conducted indicates four key factors that determine the self-made salesperson's destiny. They are language specialization, "modeling" of experiences, political acumen, and greed.
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SEVEN PERSONALITY TRAITS OF TOP SALESPEOPLE
If you ask an extremely successful salesperson, “What makes you different from the average sales rep?” you will most likely get a less-than-accurate answer, if any answer at all. Frankly, the person may not even know the real answer because most successful salespeople are simply doing what comes naturally.

Over the past decade, I have had the privilege of interviewing thousands of top business-to-business salespeople who sell for some of the world’s leading companies. I never grow tired hearing their stories of how they win extremely competitive six- and seven-figure deals. I’ve also administered personality tests to one thousand of them. My goal was to measure their five main personality traits (openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and negative emotionality) to better understand the characteristics that separate them their peers.

The personality tests were given to high technology and business services salespeople as part of sales strategy workshops I was conducting for their company. In addition, tests were administered at Presidents Club meetings (the incentive trip that top salespeople are awarded by their company for their outstanding performance). The responses were then categorized by percentage of annual quota attainment and classified into top performers, average performers, and below average performers categories.
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PERSUASION TACTICS OF EFFECTIVE SALESPEOPLE
Without language, you wouldn't be able to share your ideas, display your personality, or express yourself to the world. You couldn't communicate your needs and desires to others, and the never-ending dialogue within your mind would grind to a halt. The words we speak truly define who we are. However, since we are continually talking all the time, we often take it for granted.

Many well-established fields of language study exist to help us gain a deeper understanding of how we talk to each other. Sociolinguistics is the study of language use in society and social networks; psycholinguistics is the study of how the mind acquires, uses, and represents language; and neurolinguistics is the study of how brain structures process language. "Sales linguistics" draws from these fields to help us understand how salespeople and their prospective customers use and interpret language during the decision-making process.

Successful customer communications are the foundation of all sales, and the most persuasive and effective salespeople — the ones I call "Heavy Hitters" — naturally speak in the language of their customers. The question is, "What do they say?"

The three fundamental principles, drawn from sales linguistics, can help us be more persuasive salespeople: every customer speaks in his or her own unique language, successful salespeople build rapport through harmonious communication, and, finally, that people are persuaded based on personal connections. Let's look at each of these imperatives in turn: Click Here to Read the Entire Article >

END THE SALES AND MARKETING WAR
Struggling companies all share something in common. Their sales and marketing efforts are at odds. Sometimes, they are even at war. The marketing team lectures the sales department, saying that if only the salespeople would follow their advice, their problems would be solved. Meanwhile, the sales department always says it needs something else from marketing. The salespeople are clamoring for the silver bullets that will convince the most ardent skeptic to buy.

The root cause of this situation is that sales and marketing sometimes have different views of the world. To some marketing departments, selling is simply a series of steps that you guide a prospect through. These steps are based on the logic of purchasing the product, and the marketing team’s job is to provide the tools to move the prospect to the next step. Meanwhile, salespeople must work with the unpredictable part of the process: people. Their job is to formulate an account strategy based upon the people whom they are trying to sell to. They need intuition about what to do and say in a particular competitive situation.

As a result, friction between the two areas develops. Salespeople feel they must translate what they see as marketing’s theoretical arguments into a practical message, while the marketing team often believes the salespeople themselves are the problem because they are not following their product positioning. Having analyzed hundreds of sales cycles and conducted thousands of interviews as part of the win-loss studies I have performed on behalf of my clients, here are four sequential steps to define the intuition that sales needs so sales and marketing are synchronized. Click Here to Read the Entire Article >

HOW TO HIRE A VP OF SALES
The vice president of sales is one of the most important people within a company because this person is in charge of an organization's most critical assets: customers and the revenue they generate. However, the senior leadership team that hires a new vice president of sales is often a collection of diverse individuals with backgrounds in areas such as finance, marketing, engineering, and manufacturing. Since they often lack deep sales domain expertise, there is a higher probability that the team members will not select the right candidate for their particular sales environment.

Here are two important factors that the senior leadership team should consider when selecting a vice president of sales.

Sales Management Style
I had the chance to work with many different sales leaders over the course of my twenty year sales career in positions ranging from salesperson to vice president of sales. As a sales training consultant for the past decade and an adjunct professor at USC's Marshall School of Business, I have had the opportunity to study the sales management styles of nearly one thousand VPs of sales and have found there are five common types: mentor, expressive manager, sergeant, overconfident manager, and micromanager.

Mentors are charismatic leaders and sales experts who measure their success by exceeding revenue goals and fostering an environment where the entire team can succeed. Mentors tend to have a hands-off management style and firmly believe in the consultative selling approach.

Expressive managers are charming and gregarious individuals who have a natural ability to put people at ease. They are likely to become bored with mundane tasks because they would rather be in the field closing big deals with their sales reps. Click Here to Read The Entire Article >

THE SEVEN DEADLY SINS OF SALESPEOPLE
In the late sixth century, Pope Gregory described the seven deadly sins from the least serious to the most, as superbia, invidia, ira, avaritia, tristia, gula, and luxuria. Translated from Latin, they are pride, envy, anger, avarice, sadness, gluttony, and lust. What do you think are the seven deadly sins of salespeople? Here's my list, in order of least to most severe.

Chattering. Salespeople talk too much on sales calls for a variety of reasons. Some are nervous chatterers who just can't keep their mouths shut. Others think they know more than the customer so they lecture the customer to death. Many salespeople feel compelled to recite their canned pitch regardless of the customer's actual interest. You have conducted a perfect sales call when the customer has been persuaded to buy even though you listened far more than you spoke.

Gourmandizing. Millionaire railroad tycoon Diamond Jim Brady was a Legendary Gourmand who lived at the turn of the twentieth century. For breakfast he ate eggs, pancakes, pork chops, cornbread, fried potatoes, hominy, muffins, and beefsteak and drank a gallon of orange juice. Lunch consisted of two lobsters, deviled crabs, clams, oysters, beef, and several pies. A platter of seafood and carafes of lemon soda constituted his 4:30 snack. The evening meal began with three dozen oysters, six crabs, and turtle soup. The main course was two whole ducks, six or seven lobsters, a sirloin steak, and servings of vegetables. Dessert included a platter of pastries and often a two-pound box of candy. Does your sales organization include a "Diamond Jim Brady" who devours company resources to the point of gluttony? Click Here to Read the Entire Article >