In working with teams all over the world I am often asked what is the most critical trait for a successful sales person, and my answer is always the same, “Genuine Curiosity”. Curiosity is like one a Swiss Army Knife with all the attachments. It gets the job done in nearly every situation and is easy to access once you’ve got it in your tool kit. Curiosity helps you in:
- Building customer relationships. You will notice a different level of respect from your clients because you’re showing an authentic level of interest in them as individuals and their company – and clients like that!
- Increasing your business acumen. Being curious about your own industry and the industries of your prospects drives you to learn more. As you satisfy your curiosity, you’re augmenting your ability to add value to your customers’ business. Clients want to know you know about their ecosystem: Industry, customer set, products and services plus trends and direction.
- You emote sincerity, because you are. You ask questions that uncover needs because you are genuinely curious, not because it’s in the training manual and your demeanor is natural and not formulaic.
- Solving customer problems. It’s a truism that customers are looking for solutions to their problems. It’s only possible to create a meaningful and unique solution is you’re motivated by true curiosity about what’s actually going on and why those problems recur.
- Negotiating successful contracts. Your ability to understand the positions of the other party are directly dependent upon your ability to feel true curiosity about them. If you’re not curious, you’ll end up arguing about issues that aren’t important.
- Correcting sales errors. When a customer buys from somebody else (or doesn’t buy from anyone at all), if you’re not curious about what that happened, you won’t bother to find out why, and therefore can’t learn from your failures.
- Creating solid solutions. Sales people who aren’t curious about what makes people tick and why technology works (or doesn’t) can’t possibly create workable solutions, products or services that people want buy. Curiosity enables you to create unique solutions to their unique issues.
In short, curiosity at the core of every successful business effort. If you don’t have curiosity, you can’t expect to be successful as an entrepreneur, a salesperson or even as an engineer. Period.
