Sales is one of the most challenging and rewarding career options in today's business world. It's also one of the most important. After all, without the right kind of sales and marketing, no business can succeed for long. For those considering a career in sales, having the right kind of personality is just as important as having the right skills.

Sales is much more than just explaining a product or service to a customer in the hope that they will make a purchase. In fact, the sales and marketing process can be broken down into six key steps: prospecting, qualifying, presenting, overcoming objections, closing, and maintaining.

Prospecting is the art of locating new potential customers. While sales and marketing departments may work closely in generating new sales leads and identifying new business opportunities, those who excel in sales usually have strong networking skills and are quite sociable. After identifying potential customers, sales people must qualify their prospects by assessing customer needs in order to identify which product or service is the right fit for the client and their business. This step requires sales people to have adequate product knowledge and strong listening skills. Presentation comes next. This is where the sales person's energy level, enthusiasm, and communication and persuasion skills are vitally important as they show how the service or product being sold will address the needs uncovered during the qualification process. Prior to the closing, the art of asking for and getting the sale, a sales person may need to identify and overcome customer objections. This portion of the sales process requires both confidence and determination. When a customer says no, a great sales person must be self-confident, resilient, and be able to maintain a positive attitude. Of course after the sale, a great sales person also knows that it important to maintain and up-sell key accounts.

Sales Personalities in Business

While product knowledge and business skills are important, clearly sales jobs require a basic personally skill set. And, while having your bachelor's degree in sales and marketing or getting sales training can be extremely helpful, there are some basic personality types that tend to perform better than average in most sales careers.

• Leaders — These "type A" personalities thrive on competition and change. In addition to being quite direct, they enjoy taking risks and are very persistent. This makes the "type A" person an excellent choice for sales positions in businesses where they can put their "take charge" attitude and entrepreneurial drive to work. Outside sales and straight commission jobs are ideal for those with this "driven to succeed" personality.
  
  
• Socializers — This personality type thrives on being the center of attention. Bringing energy and enthusiasm to the sales process, "socializers" generally excel in both sales and marketing. In addition to being friendly, outgoing, and talkative, they are generally quite persuasive by nature which is obviously an asset in nearly every type of sales.
  
  
• Detail Oriented — Detail-oriented sales people tend to be very serious and focused. As the name implies they thrive on the important details of business. They enjoy knowing the facts and are consistent, sensitive, and dependable. Detail-oriented people do particularly well in technical product sales.
  
  

Getting Ahead in Sales

In addition to having the right personality skill set, getting ahead in sales and marketing requires having the right set of credentials which these days generally includes having your bachelor's degree. While degrees in business, sales, and marketing are available at most traditional colleges and universities, there are also many online bachelor's degree programs available.

Sources:
Hire For Success (www.hiresuccess.com)
Walden Testing (www.waldentesting.com)