Your sales people are some of the most instrumental employees at your company. You put your business’s success in their hands. Without them, you wouldn’t be selling your products or services and you wouldn’t be making any profits.

It’s natural then that you want to find the very best sales people with necessary sales traits. Not everyone is cut out to be a sales rep; some people just don’t have the sales traits that are needed to be successful in the field. To ensure you are employing rock star sales reps, here are five key sales traits that you should keep in mind while hiring.

1.  Assertiveness

Assertiveness is one of the most important sales traits to ensuring a shortened sales cycle. A sales rep with this trait is persistent enough to keep going after a sale, and confident enough to believe that he can get it. Sales reps who are passive may not be able to handle rejection or close a deal if they face any type of obstacle, while overly arrogant sales reps can seem pushy and abrasive, which will turn off potential customers. Assertiveness lies somewhere in the middle, and it’s this moderation between the two that leads to success.

2. Drive

Sales people are often left to their own devices. The executives know that they need the independence to build their own customer relationships, come up with their own sales tactics, and do what they need to do to close a sale. Of the many sales traits a person can have, drive is vital to success. A sales rep with drive will not quit until he has that sale. A driven sales person has goals, and will figure out how to accomplish them without any prodding. He is determined, persistent, and passionate.

3. Empathy

Empathy is subtle, but it’s one of the most invaluable sales traits that a successful sales rep can have. An empathic sales person can relate to the customers, understand their needs and concerns, and can really identify with them and put them at ease. An empathetic sales person can gain the customers’ trust and create strong connections with them. Customers feel like they are important and that the sales rep is really interested in providing them with a solution to their problem. This interpersonal sales trait ensures that the building blocks to long-term customer relations are set in place, so the customers will want to work with your company for the near future.

4. Focus

A sales rep can have all the personality sales traits needed to charm the prospects, but if he doesn’t have focus to get the job done, all the leg work will have been a waste of time. A sales rep with focus is internally driven to accomplish his goals above all else. He can stay on topic long enough to close the sale, while clearly stating objectives, providing clear and direct answers to questions and possessing the self-discipline needed to stay on target.

5. Optimism

Your prospects won’t want to be around negative sales people. When your sales rep has optimism, people will naturally want to be around him. What’s more, it’s vital for your sales rep to have this trait when things go awry. If one morning sales call goes terribly, an optimistic person will brush it off and believe that the next meeting will be better. A negative person will let this failure affect his performance for the rest of the day, or week. An optimistic person will not let anything get them down, whether it’s a bad economy or a bad day.

There are five sales traits that every rock star sales rep needs to have to succeed. When you know what these traits are, you can create the fiercest sales team possible for your business, which will in turn create a high return on investment and boost your profits.