A book never written: How to Succeed in Sales Without Really Trying, by Wanda Kind.
Sales acumen is the collection of traits, experiences, skills, and mindsets that enable a salesperson to thrive in their field. But the first thing sales managers want to stress to eager, rising sales representatives is that no one’s born with stellar sales acumen. It’s learned — or rather, it’s developed — a question of nurture more than nature that sales managers answer in the ways that best suit their business.
“The most powerful way to develop acumen is through firsthand experience,” Adam Sofair-Fisch, vice president of strategic accounts at Movable Ink, said. “We had a sales rep who started as our most entry-level role and was promoted through our sales organization. In their more senior role on the strategic team, through partnering closely with their manager, with call shadowing and working through communications together, this rep was successfully able to navigate complex resources to close a seven-figure deal.”
Sofair-Fisch knows that behind every successful team of sales reps stands a manager working to encourage and enable them. But micro-management couldn’t be further from his own approach.
“When sellers start, they have a manager who is operationally experienced across the business and can help them navigate different scenarios and sales motions, but we empower them to jump in,” Sofair-Fisch said. “By fostering an environment of independence, each seller can adapt their strengths to our process, have the latitude to be creative, and make an impact.”
Built In spoke to Sofair-Fisch and sales managers at two other companies about their leadership styles and the key to helping sales reps develop their own acumen.
Rho is a New York-based fintech building a business banking platform, whose single-solution approach encompasses collaborative finance software, corporate cards, and commercial-grade banking.
In your experience, what are the traits, experience, skills, and mindsets that define a successful salesperson?
Above all else, a successful salesperson must be curious. That then leads to all the other traditional skills synonymous with sales. If a salesperson is naturally curious, they will take it upon themselves to do the extra research and work — beyond the onboarding and continuous training they receive. They’ll dive into competitor and product knowledge, listen back to their calls to see where they can improve, and listen to peers’ calls to pick up different tactics. They’ll seek out internal and external resources to learn as much as possible, putting themselves in a position to be successful for any type of prospect or objection. Curiosity leads to coachability. Not being afraid to fail, staying motivated, and always looking to improve — this is the backbone of a successful salesperson.
Not being afraid to fail, staying motivated, and always looking to improve — this is the backbone of a successful salesperson.”
How do you help your reps develop their own sales acumen?
No sales rep can reach their ceiling unless they are given the freedom to be themselves. That doesn’t mean they do as they please, but rather that they take the structure, training, and best practices of their sales organization and mold it to fit their personality and selling style. To help reps define their own style, I think it is important to focus on providing them with context and the resources they need to be successful. On the sales development team, we don’t demand certain activity metrics. Instead, each rep will be trained on different outbound tactics, given context on how other reps have been successful in the past, and then allowed to determine what methods to focus on based on their skillset.
As a manager of salespeople, what’s a lesson you've learned that helps you bring out the best in your direct reports?
As a manager, people assume you should know everything compared to your direct reports. But in reality, we don’t always know best. I think the biggest thing I’ve learned — and try to be disciplined about — is, when a rep asks for help in a specific instance (talk track, responding to an email, breaking into an account), to first ask them what their initial thoughts are about the task at hand. It is really easy to just try to address the problem without getting the rep’s feedback, but that stunts creativity. Oftentimes, the ideas they have are better than what I was going to suggest. Had I simply provided my “expertise,” we might have missed out on a valuable idea.
Movable Ink is a New York-based software-as-service company that activates data into personalized content in any customer engagement, allowing businesses to deliver more personalized and relevant email marketing.
In your experience, what are the traits, experience, skills, and mindsets that define a successful salesperson?
At Movable Ink, we believe that great salespeople come from a diverse set of backgrounds and offer different sets of strengths. The two baselines we look for are intelligence and flexibility. Intelligence can be broken down into relationship-building strength (i.e., people skills, relationship-building, and emotional intelligence) and analytical strength (i.e., the ability to find solutions, build strong proposals, and process complex sets of facts for a renewal). Flexibility means being able to maintain grounded optimism and roll through the inevitable ups and downs of sales while executing high output on the right activities. Overall, we want to make sure that we keep a very high bar and that the folks we attract to our organization will bring a unique perspective and inspire the organization.
How do you help your reps develop their own sales acumen?
With clients across every single vertical, it’s important to provide each rep with the tools and resources they need. It’s critical that our enablement programs reflect the diversity of challenges and goals each industry has, so sellers can feel confident going into any conversation. But the most powerful way to develop acumen is through firsthand experience. We had a sales representative who started as our most entry-level role and was promoted through our sales organization. In their more senior role on the strategic team, through partnering closely with their manager (complete with call shadowing and working through communications together), this rep was successfully able to navigate complex resources to close a seven-figure deal. Through that experience and partnership, that rep became able to operate at the highest level independently to orchestrate other large deals! When sellers start, they have a manager who is operationally experienced across the business and can help them navigate different scenarios and sales motions, but we empower them to jump in. By fostering an environment of independence, each seller can adapt their strengths to our process, have the latitude to be creative, and make an impact.
By fostering an environment of independence, each seller can adapt their strengths to our process, have the latitude to be creative, and make an impact.”
As a manager of salespeople, what’s a lesson you’ve learned that helps you bring out the best in your direct reports?
Empathy is one of Movable Ink’s core values and it extends to our relationships with both clients and employees. Teamwork, caring about employees’ goals, and cultivating a nurturing environment are at the core of what we do (it also helps foster healthy competition — it’s sales after all!). Having this ingrained in our business has helped us build a really unique culture where reps (and all employees) are encouraged to go above and beyond to help each other, and to act with a level of respect and kindness that is definitely unique.
Botify is a New York-based enterprise software company that helps brands turn organic search into an efficient, measurable, and sustainable channel for both traffic and revenue growth.
In your experience, what are the traits, experience, skills, and mindsets that define a successful salesperson?
We want curious, team-oriented problem-solvers. If you optimize for those traits, you set the team and the company up for success. These are all traits that you can test for during the interview process by sharing that you care about these traits and seeing if interviewees were truly listening and can address those areas for you. I think this also leads to finding reps that are coachable and have some level of professional impatience, which are supporting pillars of those three traits.
How do you help your reps develop their own sales acumen?
Repetition. Call reviews are a great way we all get better, and they allow us to simulate live scenarios. We use a call recording tool, Gong, and analyze the calls both individually and as a group. We do one of these reviews with every team member each week and then larger group reviews on a bi-weekly cadence. It’s good to review your own calls and teammates’ calls. But when reviewing your own, we’ve found folks often need to listen through multiple times to get over the sound of their own voice so they can really listen.
Be you. People can tell if you’re not.”
As a manager of salespeople, what’s a lesson you’ve learned that helps you bring out the best in your direct reports?
No one personality wins out. Some amazing reps are bubbly and talk fast, while others are very methodical and deliberate. It’s important that you’re all operating out of the same playbook but authenticity matters. Be you. People can tell if you’re not. I’ve missed in the past by trying to recruit reps with a very similar style or whose skill sets are very similar, but as with any team, you need a variety of personality types.
AB Tasty is a New York-based software company and global provider of customer experience optimization software, offering a complete tool for website and conversion rate optimization, personalization, user engagement and A/B experimentation.
In your experience, what are the traits, experience, skills, and mindsets that define a successful salesperson?
A mistake I made early in my career was searching for a very specific and wide set of traits that I thought every successful representative should possess on paper. It was a mistake because the “perfect” salesperson does not exist, and building a team that all looks and sounds the same is a recipe for disaster. What I have learned with time is that the diversity within a sales team will make the company and its customers better. A few qualities that I think are universal in order to build a great team and be successful in sales are: Curiosity and enthusiasm — having an enthusiasm to learn and ask questions helps you understand how to solve difficult business problems for your customers. Humility — I look at this in two main ways. The first is how you conduct yourself. When you win, you lift up others who helped you get there and celebrate together. The second is knowing that you do not know everything and being confident enough to ask someone for help. Problem-solver mindset — A lot of people are good at finding problems, but not many are willing to spend the time finding ways to solve them. Those who naturally are looking for ways to do things better and more efficiently make great salespeople.
How do you help your reps develop their own sales acumen?
Developing sales acumen can be a long journey for representatives if they only build their knowledge through their own experiences. I am convinced that we can grow much faster individually when we work as a team. At AB Tasty, our salespeople are supported with a best-in-class sales and enablement team from day one. We have heavily invested in our tech stack to support sales and provide a very structured onboarding experience in order to build a foundation sales reps can work from. The sales team has a workshop at the end of every week during which a pair of reps present a problem, discovery, or Gong call for discussion. Everyone is expected to contribute, and we go around the room sharing our experiences and thoughts. I look forward to this meeting every week because I always walk away with more knowledge and new ideas to implement in my day-to-day work life.
I am convinced that we can grow much faster individually when we work as a team.”
As a manager of salespeople, what’s a lesson you’ve learned that helps you bring out the best in your direct reports?
Everything starts with a relationship. If I want the best out of someone, I have to know about them beyond the professional lens. It took me a long time to be comfortable sharing details about “who I am” outside of work, but once I realized that I cannot be a different person at work versus at home, the trust that I built with colleagues accelerated our success. Beyond relationships, I also want everyone to be able to make decisions that impact their future and potential success. The worst way to lead is top-down and telling others the one way to do their job. I want everyone to have a seat at the table so we can find the best solutions together.
