HATTIE: What makes up a successful salesperson?

RON WILLINGHAM: We've had well over a million graduates from our training courses -- I've tried to ask myself -- `What are the common ingredients of successful salespeople?' Typically, we think in the old stereotypes--you know, glib, extroverted, back-slapping, cigar-chomping kind of a person. It's my experience that we can certainly throw those stereotypes out and do away with them.

Effective salespeople today, first of all, understand their product or service, and almost all of the great ones that I've known have a passion about it. They have a passion that causes them to believe that their product or service creates more value for people than they pay them for. And this passion is what releases energy, it releases achievement drive, it makes them feel good, and they get up looking in the mirror each morning as missionaries. They're going out to save the world and to create value for the world. So that's one that thing I've noticed in successful salespeople, is passion.

Another thing is the balance of that, and that is the ability to do the hard work that has to be done, whether it's making calls, getting appointments, seeing people, taking care of problems, whatever has to be done that's difficult to do. A lot of salespeople are great at communicating with people, and they know their products well, but they're not willing to do the hard things that cause success in selling, like seeing people or organizing yourself, or doing the paperwork, the details that have to be done.