Good versus great in sales
Sales is one of the few jobs where everyone can see your numbers, which is exactly why they can mislead. A good salesperson hits target. A great one hits it in a way customers want to come back to: they sell what the customer needs rather than what suits this quarter, and what they promised turns up in the contract and then in real life.
The gap rarely comes down to charm or a polished pitch. It's in quieter moments: the questions asked on a discovery call, the nerve to walk away from a deal that's going nowhere, a forecast that turns out to be right, the way an account gets handed over to the people who'll deliver it. Customers and colleagues notice all of this. The leaderboard doesn't.
Whether you're selling software into procurement teams, industrial equipment over a long sales cycle, insurance over the phone or kitchens in a showroom, the test is the same. A great sale is one the customer never regrets, and that makes them want to buy from the same person again.
Where the difference shows
Every sales role has its own rhythm, but some moments come up everywhere. They're where you can tell someone who sells from someone people actually want to buy from.
- The discovery call. A good salesperson presents the product. A great one keeps asking until they understand what the problem's costing the customer today, who signs off, and what happens if nothing changes. They listen more than they talk, and play back what they've heard before proposing anything.
- The price objection. Instead of offering a discount at the first sign of hesitation, they bring the conversation back to value: what the solution changes for the customer, set against what it costs. If they give something away, they get something in return.
- The deal that's gone quiet. They can tell when a conversation is going round in circles, ask plainly what happens next, and take the deal out of the forecast when it stops moving, rather than pushing it back month after month.
- The buying committee. In a large organisation, the decision runs through the users, procurement, finance, and sometimes legal or IT security. A great salesperson maps those people early and gives each of them what they need, instead of betting everything on one friendly contact.
- The handover. Once the contract's signed, they brief the implementation or customer success team on what they learnt and what they promised, without polishing anything, so the customer never finds a gap on day one of the project.
- The unhappy customer. They pick up the phone when things go wrong, not just when there's something to sell, and they fight the customer's corner inside their own company.
- Selling to consumers. In a shop, a branch or on the phone, they work out in a few questions what the person is really after, are happy to talk them out of the most expensive option when it won't help, and win a customer who comes back and sends friends and family their way.
The skills people see, and the ones they don't
Some qualities are obvious from the first meeting. Others only show over time, and usually to colleagues rather than customers. They're the ones that build a long sales career.
It's the second half of that list that most sales CVs leave out. It doesn't fit into a line about targets, but it comes through clearly in a recommendation from a presales colleague or a long-standing customer.
- Easy to see: active listening, which shows in sharp questions and accurate summaries of what the customer said.
- Easy to see: a clear case, pitched differently for each person, practical for the end user, commercial for the finance director.
- Easy to see: negotiating well, which is less about winning an arm wrestle than reaching a deal both sides will stand behind afterwards.
- Easy to see: persistence in prospecting, with follow-ups that add something rather than simply chase.
- Harder to see: keeping the CRM properly up to date, so anyone on the team can pick up an account without asking the customer to start again.
- Harder to see: honest forecasting, because hiring plans, stock levels and production schedules depend on it.
- Harder to see: working well with presales, sales operations, legal and delivery, without whom no large deal ever gets signed.
- Harder to see: taking a no without taking it personally, and starting the next day with the same energy.
- Harder to see: knowing the customer's sector well enough to talk about their problems before talking about your product.
Habits that cost good salespeople
Plenty of people who hit their numbers have one or two of these habits. Sooner or later they cost something, whether it's customers or the trust of the team.
None of these will come up at interview. They do come through, between the lines, in what former customers and colleagues say, which is why anyone hiring for a sales role wants to hear from them.
- talking about the product before understanding the customer's problem;
- overselling, by promising a feature or a date the delivery team only hears about after the contract's signed;
- discounting to close faster, and teaching the customer to wait for the end of the quarter before they negotiate;
- leaving deals in the forecast that you know are lost, to avoid having that conversation;
- chasing without adding anything new, until a prospect who was interested stops replying;
- disappearing once the contract's signed, then reappearing just before renewal;
- letting the CRM slide, so whoever inherits your accounts has to start from scratch;
- relying on one big customer to the point where you've stopped prospecting.
What hiring managers look for on a sales CV
Hiring for a sales role nearly always starts with results: what the target was, whether you hit it, over what period and in what market. That matters, but every candidate arrives with a good story about their numbers, and the hiring manager knows it. So they try to work out how the numbers were made.
They'll want to know what kind of selling you did: short, transactional sales or complex ones with a long cycle and several decision makers. Whether you generated your own pipeline or worked inbound leads. Whether you were winning new business or growing existing accounts. And whether your customers stayed with you from one year to the next.
They'll also listen to how you talk about deals you lost. A lost deal explained honestly, with what you learnt and what you'd do differently, is more reassuring than a record with no setbacks at all.
And they'll want someone else's word for it. In sales, recommendations carry particular weight: a customer who signed, renewed and then expanded the contract is more convincing than anything you can say about yourself. If you're wondering what a new employer will ask the people you name, our guide to employment references goes through the usual questions.
Which personality profiles thrive in this role?
The Take Your Skills personality test for work describes sixteen profiles, each with its own natural tendencies. None of them is made for sales, but some will recognise themselves in the situations the job throws up:
Other profiles do just as well, in their own way. The Guardian looks after people and details alike, which isn't the usual picture of a hunter. Yet in account management, noticing what others miss, a constraint mentioned in passing or a key contact about to move on, is what keeps customers renewing without needing to be persuaded.
Every profile can excel in sales, each in a different way. The test simply puts words to your natural strengths, so you can aim for the kind of sales role where they count most and talk about them convincingly at interview.
- The Spark gets stalled work moving again and tries things out as soon as an option looks workable. That's what revives a deal that's gone quiet, suggests a trial instead of yet another presentation, and keeps prospecting from losing momentum.
- The Connector brings together people and ideas that had never met. In sales, that's the person who introduces one customer to another, spots who could open a door to the real decision maker, and gets everyone keen to move forward together.
- The Pilot sets a clear course and makes the calls that get the team there. Faced with a buying committee, they put a clear timeline on the table, hold everyone to what they've agreed, and steer the negotiation through to signature.
Getting recommendations that show how you sell
In sales, the most telling recommendations don't always come from the top. Aim for a mix of viewpoints:
Timing matters as much as the person. Good moments to ask are after a renewal, at the end of a successful rollout, after a tough quarter you got through together, or when you're leaving. With a customer, pick a point where the relationship is relaxed, never the middle of a negotiation or a tender.
On Take Your Skills, the “Ask for a recommendation” button on your profile gives you a link to send by email or message. Add a line that points them in a direction without putting words in their mouth, such as: “If you could mention how we prepared for the board presentation together, that would be really helpful.” Our guide to asking for a reference has more messages you can adapt.
Plenty of customers are happy to help and then stare at a blank page. The Take Your Skills assistant makes it easier: it asks them one question at a time about real situations they shared with you, then suggests a draft they can read and change before publishing. Their answers are never published, and they can always write it themselves instead. A customer doesn't need an account first: they follow your link and sign in with a code sent to their email, with no password to remember.
- a customer, ideally a few months after signing, once they can say whether you kept your promises;
- your line manager, on how reliable your forecasts were, how independently you worked and how you developed;
- a colleague from presales, customer success or implementation, who saw how you prepared a deal and handed it over;
- someone you trained or shadowed when they joined the team;
- in retail or branch sales, your store or branch manager, or a colleague who worked the same shifts.
Salesperson recommendation examples
Here are eight examples written from the point of view of customers, managers and colleagues. Swap in your own details for the parts in square brackets and, above all, add one fact only you know. That's what makes a recommendation believable.
A strong sales recommendation names a fact, not an adjective: a deal, a customer, a moment. “Brilliant salesperson” convinces nobody. “Her forecasts were the most reliable on the team” is something a hiring manager can check.
- From a customer, business sales: “We chose [company] largely because of [First name]. In our first meeting she asked more about our constraints than our budget, and her proposal solved problems we hadn't even put into words yet. Two years on, everything she promised has been delivered.”
- From a sales manager: “I managed [First name] for [length of time]. His forecasts were the most reliable on the team: when he called a deal, it closed, and when one was slipping, I heard it from him first. That honesty meant I could commit to the leadership team with confidence.”
- From a presales colleague: “Working with [First name] on [project] was a real pleasure. She prepared every meeting with me, passed on the customer's real questions, and never promised a feature without checking with me first. Our demos landed because she'd done that groundwork.”
- From an implementation lead: “When [First name] handed a new customer over to us, the file had everything: the contacts, the commitments, the sensitive points. We started every project without nasty surprises, and the customers he signed stayed with us.”
- From a long-standing customer: “When we had a serious issue with [product], [First name] rang us before we'd even got in touch. He followed it through to the end, inside his company and ours, at a time when he had nothing to sell us. That's why we renewed, and then expanded the contract.”
- From a head of sales, new business: “[First name] opened up the [sector] market for us from nothing. She took the time to understand how our future customers worked, every follow-up she sent had something new in it, and she won her first accounts on sector knowledge nobody else on the team had.”
- From a store manager: “[First name] listens before advising. More than once I watched him steer a customer towards a cheaper model because it suited them better. Those customers kept coming back to him, and sent their friends and family too.”
- From a colleague he trained: “In my first few weeks, [First name] let me shadow his meetings. He taught me to prepare my questions, to sit through a silence, and never to give away a discount just to get out of an awkward moment. I still sell with his habits.”
Putting your recommendations to work in a job search
Your recommendations appear on your public Take Your Skills profile, and you decide which ones are public and which stay private, which matters when a customer would rather their name didn't travel. You can share the whole profile by link, on your CV or in a message to a recruiter, or download it as a PDF to go with an application.
From your public recommendations, Take Your Skills also writes a professional portrait of you: the skills people mention most and what sets you apart, in English and French, updated with every new recommendation. If several customers talk about how well you listen and two colleagues mention your forecasting, that's what your portrait will lead with, in their words rather than yours.
For a sales role, that's one more point in your favour. Before you've even walked into the interview, you've shown you can earn people's trust, and that it lasts beyond the signature.