What characteristics set elite sales teams from the rest of the pack? Honing down on these traits isn’t just a matter of standing out; it’s a necessity if you want to increase your appeal to elite clients. In this episode, Darren CdeBaca breaks down the top five traits of elite salespeople and sales teams, as well as the mindset drivers that form the basis for those traits to exist. Prepare to take notes as Darren explains exactly why being the best has nothing in common with being average. So how do you become the best? Tune in to find out.
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Top 5 Traits Of The Elite
Before I start like in every one of our episodes, I want to make sure that I initiate this topic with passion because it embodies the work at DCB Strategies, which is built around the following phrase. The following phrase defines what we do and also defines the Top Five Traits of the Elite once we get to understand those.
Here's that phrase, “Being the best and average has nothing in common.” This captures those individuals or teams that achieve bold goals with their plans of accountability and huge purpose. Whether you're a professional, athlete, involved in other career opportunities, personal, non-profits or etc., being the best and average have nothing in common. Say that to yourself for a moment. When you say that, does your mind want to intuitively place you on one side of the line in the sand or the other saying, “My best or average?” That's okay. We're starting up the engine. We're not here to judge but we want to make sure that you give your best. You have great information to always grow in your best way. That's what we're talking about. This topic is pretty precise.
When I have the opportunity to say these are the top five traits, we better define them precisely so you then can carry on and see how you measure up, measure in and can measure through to go in, accomplish and embrace these traits yourself. Our discussion is to remind everybody out there. For anybody who's been in the financial industry who is interested in these elite traits of sales teams or individuals, you may have tuned in the past to a recent show that I did call The Trifecta of a Successful Salesperson. It is different. That past episode of The Trifecta of the Successful Salesperson was very energetically spelling out the magic three building blocks which are vision, reputation and performance. Which is categorically different from this topic of revealing the top five traits of elite salespeople in this business.
Being the best and average have nothing in common.
Let's refresh the setting so we can have a very clear understanding of what's a trait, what are characteristics, etc. What is a trait? Traits are qualities and characteristics. They're set in. They're part of the beam. What's a building block? Something I mentioned to you about the trifecta of a successful salesperson. Those are building blocks. Those are units from which something's built. That visibility unit, reputation unit, performance unit, that's where something's built from those units.
In this episode, we're talking about the actual being of these characteristics that don't come naturally very easily. They gravitate into these five characteristics or traits easily once you start recognizing this over the years. This discussion is going to be perfect for that reader, yourself. If you are an advisor or if you are an advisor forming a team, if you're a branch office manager or manager of a complex of advisors in the financial industry or complex of offices, you're a leader. You're a leader of the sales teams. We would all want as leaders of those sales teams to own and try to build themselves to deliver as a natural habit these characteristics and traits.
If you're an asset management firm that has distribution teams, who are made up of wholesalers, internal sales, team partners and marketing folk. We want to make sure that you mark you match your marketing, your storyboards, your differentiation techniques to the appetite of the elite that you're after to become a client. This is broad-based if you have any interest in getting more larger clients, elite clients. Also, if you're interested in building your team around these elite traits. The benefit of knowing your audience and the traits that they possess allows you to be a mirror in your deliverables. Thus being very attuned to their appetite and language through your presentations, your set of open-ended questions, your important topics, your engaging techniques and your value adds, etc. This is what we call the best use of our words.
As I always like to say, it's not how you raise your voice with your clients or your sales teams or your advisors. It's how you raise your words. That's what we're doing. We're raising our words to become attuned to what allows the best to have these five traits and put in some working units to either become the best in the sales side or to at least be aware of that and accentuate your own activity around their appetite. After a few decades of working with top teams and individuals in this financial industry, these characteristics became somewhat obvious after thinking about it multiple times. When I was in the car, a plane, about to enter a meeting, I always wrote down what was the highlights of the individuals I'm about to meet or the teams that I'm about to meet. I'd compare them to those highlights I wrote down after the meeting. After looking back at my years of notes, they all have these common threads.
The Mindset Drivers
First, let's recognize what sets the elite sales teams apart from the rest. Do keep in mind that these individuals that make up the team and/or the teams of 3, 5, 7, 15 people, they all possess bold, common drivers of these traits. What I mean by that is this has to come first before these traits are developed. Those are the bold drivers. I call that set of bold drivers, the mindset of culture. They have a mindset and have a culture instilled with them that defines what their customs are. Their customary practices in managing their businesses. In managing it for the current in future benefit thereof. Let me share with you what I recognized are the six drivers for that mindset of culture. Without the mindset of culture, it's almost virtually, later on, impossible to develop or to have garnered these characteristics of habit, those traits of elite results.
Here are the six drivers that make up the mindset required to get to these traits. Number one, we need or they have. They being the elite, have a clear vision and a mission for their franchise. Our franchises are business units. We have a business unit. We're in charge of it by the franchise rules but we have a clear vision and mission of it. Not many people do. They get in it and run through it and see what happens. That’s unacceptable if you want to be a part of the elite.
High value relationships means high value returns.
Number two of the six drivers is the mantra of business practices. They have a mantra of their business practices from A to Z. What I mean by that is from preparation to achievements, they have a mantra. Let me give you an example of a mantra. The way we do anything is the way we do everything whether it's a back-office support person in that team of elite status or it's your back-office support person. Whether it's the top rainmaker and everyone in between, everyone thinks the same way through that mantra. The way we do anything is the way we do everything. That's an example.
Number three, third driver. There are no excuses. NEA, No Excuse Atmosphere as I call it. Full accountability for everybody. No finger-pointing. If you hit the button on the computer, you hit it. Nobody else did. That clears up a lot of concern, thoughts and things to discuss that are meaningless. No excuses. Everyone has full accountability. If they're not confident in other scenarios, they asked their partners to help, get better and stronger and become fully accountable. That's part of growing. The fourth driver is they never stopped growing the appetite of, “Let's do this right.” That's very unique because what it does is it doesn't allow you to set in a sense of complacency.
Number five, they don't see any obstacles. Did do not see any obstacles in the way they want to grow? Number six, they're flexible. If some things don't work, re-adjust and restart. There's an old saying, “The most flexible trees in the forest are the strongest,” and it's not a saying. It's true. The more flexible we become, the stronger we are relative to the ability for us to perform to the level we need to as opposed to getting caught up on why things may not always go with the wind at our back. The reason I went through these sets of mindset drivers as I call them is that it's vital in being in the flow. When you have those six drivers working with you, for you, amongst your team, you're in a flow of characteristics that can be built. People can shine through these characteristics or traits.
Let's go through these highly sought-after Five Traits of the Elite. Number one, they have a precision-based business model. Number two, they have a branded specialty. Number three, they have a set in a growing set of high-value relationships. Number four, this is important. They're resourceful. Number five, they are as an individual or an entity, the go-to person or entity for solutions of that topic. They're the concierge of deliverables in that topic. Those are the five traits of the elite. Let's discuss each one of them a little bit more specifically.
Precision-Based Business Model
Number one trait, precision-based business model. That's what we call at DCB Strategies the franchise architecture. Defining who owns what in the moving parts of your business so you know it, you're clear about it and everybody's accountable. Number two, every deliverable that's going out to clients or to be seen by a potential audience to buy your product or involved in the interest of your product is at its elite best. The way it looks is the way to read underneath the constraints of your resources.
Number three, about a precision-based business model. The time allocation of their appointments of the elite sales teams, elite sales individuals and the time allocation of appointments, research, outward prospecting, branding, reporting is defined and honored. It's flexible but restated due to the unspecific events. There's an honor of time allocation. We have an hour and a half to do this. We do our best and it gets complete. If not, we move on to tomorrow and allocate another 1.5 hours because the next 1.5 hours after that is about this topic that needs our full focus and attention.
It takes a lot of work to earn a reputation as a go-to person but we must strive to earn the privilege of being highly-regarded.
What it does by having time allocation of appointments and etc. on your calendar, in these elements breeds performance with focus. You're in that hour and a half of outward prospecting or branding, building or reporting. You're completely focused on that. Precision-based business model, franchise architecture, every deliverable the best it could be. They are conquerors of their calendar which builds performance and focus.
Branded Specialty
The next elite trait is branded specialty. Branded specialty is where the person or the entity is totally focused on their specialty and everybody knows it. Whether it's fixed income specialty, corporate services, succession business planning, succession family planning, value-added deliverables, next-gen preparation, capital markets, where you become a CIO story, your Chief Investment Officer mentality specialty. Whether you’re a storyboard expert with your clients, giving them something they can repeat back to their clients in 4 or 5 wonderful bullet points. Whether it's an athlete who has a specialty in terms of their actual leadership, their qualities of performance. Whether you have athletes that you manage, a professional in retirement planning or network business-oriented. Have a branded specialty and be known by it. That's one of the five characteristics of elite salespeople. Look at your business and ask yourself, what's your brand specialty?
High-Value Relationships
Number three, what are your high-value relationships? One of the characteristics of elite sales teams, the third one is they have high-value relationships. They built or they're building a network of like-minded centers of influences. They believe in practice. Their entire network believes and practices in abundance versus scarcity. They want to share good stuff with the group. These relationships and clients believe that you have tremendous value to introduce to other like-minded people, clients and prospects. You develop pods. A pod of succession planning, professional athlete managers, value-added deliverables, next-gen practitioners, etc. It has its own relationship. They're all willing to share a network and refer you out. High-value relationships mean high-value returns.
Resourcefulness
If they're like-minded, they hang around like-minded wallets. Therefore, your clients would give you like-minded business. Elite business from elite characteristics of high-value relationships. Number four characteristics of elite salespeople are they're resourceful versus they always say they need more resources. We are what we are. We do what we can with what we have. The businesses that you're associated with have plenty to share with you to be very successful. I doubt there's one thing you don't have other than the easy road to prosperity. What I mean by that is we have an easy road to prosperity if we work hard.
Things don't become easy until you work harder at them. What I mean by that is elite salespeople are very resourceful. When you have a set of resources that are there and that's all you have, your creativity through the roof. Your ownership of results is contagious because you built it with your resources. That's where the big round of magic occurs is those who are most resourceful with what they have got great results because of the creative energies that are built upon these resources that they have. As opposed to just saying again, “I need more.” We all know that. We've seen it. We've heard it. Enough.
Being The Go-To Person
The fifth trait of elite salespeople, they've identified themselves as the go-to person or entity for providing solutions for complex opportunities. The clients, the prospects, respect your ability or respect their ability to provide attractive, timely solutions in that space. A simple example or analogy is that you're the client's CEO, Chief Executive Officer, Chief Operating Officer mentality or Chief Investment Officer mentality. I always looked at it as there's No Other Person, NOP. There's no other person than me so I had to make sure that I became the go-to person for their needs and solutions and complex capital markets ideas.
If I couldn't find the answer right away, I'd certainly work hard. We want to become a dependable solutions provider. The go-to person. It takes a lot of work to earn that reputation. To earn that privilege but we must strive to be highly regarded. When you’re highly regarded, you become the go-to person and that's what you can build on and towards your development. There is no easy way to do it but it's worth it in big spades.
The five traits of elite sales folks. Number one, they are precision-based business model-oriented. Number two, they have a branded specialty. Number three, they have high-value relationships pods and it keeps on expanding. They're resourceful, which creates creativity. Number four, they are the go-to person or entity for solutions to complex scenarios which when you're looking at large amounts of products or opportunities, you can become involved in complex scenarios that we need to make sure they have solutions for.
If you took those, you now have the opportunity to examine, measure the strength of those five traits in your own camp. First, as an important in mind or a prerequisite, you need to possess the right mindset culture. You need to make sure that the right mindset is there to drive these characteristics. Let's remind ourselves of those mindset drivers. Those mindset drivers are number one, clear vision and a mission of your franchise. Number two, you have a mantra of your business practices. Remember the one we mentioned? The way we do anything is the way we do everything. Number three, no excuse atmosphere. Full accountability.
Number four, never stopped growing, right appetite. You always want to have the appetite to grow right all the time so you're constantly doing the right thing to grow. Number five, no obstacle mindset. Number six, you're flexible. When you take a look at these elements of mindset, they lead to those common characteristics that we described are the traits of those elite sales folks. I'm grateful for your time. Clearly, you're now equipped to take your next steps of growth into these elite traits. It's your opportunity to take advantage of. First, you have to decide, as we say at DCB Strategies, with that mindset.
Next, make the commitment with new actions that define your desired results set, which are the strong five traits or the elite traits of elite salespeople. You then congratulate yourself for becoming a DCB Strategies, decide, commit and you become and belong to the elite with elite benefits. Thank you for your time. I encourage you to visit my website or email me at Podcast@DCBStrategies.com. To have the opportunity to share with you The Five Top Traits of Elite Salespeople is a privilege. Hopefully, you garnered a tremendous amount of questioning, writing, comparing, re-engineering where you are with the mindset drivers and where we can be with the traits that are all yours to have. As I always say and mean, stay healthy and passionate. Take care for now. Thanks for your time. I look forward to our next episode. Make it a great day.
Important Links
The Trifecta of a Successful Salesperson – Previous episode
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