Like warriors, successful salespeople need to focus on winning small and large battles every day. Salespeople who embrace the competitive side of sales are often referred to as sales warriors. These sales warriors treat failure like an enemy, and strive every day to improve their sales abilities and results. Typically, these sales warriors share some common traits and behaviors. It’s these behaviors, and their drive to succeed, that help a sales warrior to win over new clients and turn old ones into repeat buyers. These five traits can also help you to become a sales warrior.

Purpose

To be really successful in sales, you must have a clear sense of purpose. If sales is just a job to you, and you’re just killing time until another job pops up, then it will be hard for you to convey the excitement and enthusiasm that help a sales warrior to succeed. A sales warrior truly embraces being a salesperson as their calling in life, and enjoys bringing value to their clients. If you can’t approach clients with that same sense of purpose, then it will be difficult to generate the right energy to motivate your prospects into becoming buyers.

Planning

Any warrior can tell you about the importance of planning, and a sales warrior is not different. Trying to shoot from the hip, or ad lib a sales pitch, will leave you poorly prepared if the prospect goes off script. You need to have a detailed process for conducting sales. You should have a complete roadmap that traces a prospect’s path from initial interest to final closing. Not only does this make it easier to keep prospects on that path, it also makes it easier to identify where things are going wrong if prospects start to bounce out of the sales funnel. With a plan, you can easily identify every step along the way to closing. Without a plan, you have to make everything up as you go along.

Teamwork

The idea of the lone warrior battling against overwhelming odds is great for movies, but not so good in real life. A sales warrior identifies with, and works with, the overarching goals of the sales team and the business. Going rogue leaves you without a strong support system, robs your team of valuable input, and you may actually end up working against the larger goals of the business. As a sales warrior, it’s up to you to fight for the greater good. That includes sharing your experience and abilities, and using them to advance the larger sales plan.

Commitment

A sales warrior has to be committed to success, regardless of the odds or obstacles. They don’t give up when things seem difficult, and they’re not afraid of the hard work it takes to be a successful salesperson. They work day after day, even on the less glamorous work, knowing that it’s all necessary to accomplish their goals. A sales warrior understands and accepts that they may have to take on different roles for different projects, and not all of those roles will be the ones they’re most interested in. In short, they are committed to making themselves a valuable and productive member of the team, regardless of what the team asks of them.

Perseverance

And finally, a sales warrior doesn’t give up when the going gets tough. They know that there will be good days and bad, and they accept that not every battle will end in success. For a sales warrior, the only true defeat is found in giving up. Every salesperson will have dry spells, and periods of bad luck. A sales warrior learns from those periods, and uses the lessons to improve their skills for the next battle. Obstacles, whether large or small, don’t stop a sales warrior from continuing down the path to success. For them, the only guaranteed way to lose is to stop trying to win.