PERSONALITY DEVELOPMENT IN A CONCEPTUALISED MANNER IS DEPICTED HERE IN THE IMAGE.
ARTICLE UPDATED ON:23.11.2023
This small article is an extract from my book published [38 Years of Selling] two years ago and is being especially reproduced here again since this article touches & explains the core of the salesperson’s traits.
Personality Development in a Sales Professional.
“Personality Development” is a very heavy word. One needs to first understand what exactly it is. The changes occurring in oneself over some time about the circumstances in which he is put and the resultant impact on his behavior in response to the situations he is put reflects exactly on his level of Personality. So, each person develops the traits over some time, some of which essentially become his personality characteristics -later on. This is how I understand the word Personality-Development. There are many theories for example-hereditary impact on Personality Development and even certain Hereditary behaviors which are responsible and being the dominant ones in one’s day-to-day activities- explain the characteristics of the person as a whole more simply.
Personality development is the relatively enduring pattern of the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors that distinguish individuals from each other. The dominant viewpoint in personality psychology indicates that personality emerges early and continues to develop across one’s lifespan.
Personality development is the evolution of the organized pattern of behaviors and attitudes that make a person distinctive. Personality development occurs through the ongoing interaction of temperament, character, and environment. It helps one gain confidence and self-esteem and has a positive impact on one’s communication skills and the way one sees the world. Students should develop an outgoing and impressive personality that will enhance the quality of their learning. Everyone has qualities that make them unique. Try to develop your persona.
Personality development assists you in developing an enviable personality that sets you apart from the crowd. Personality development also plays an essential role in improving one’s communication skills. People should learn how to communicate their feelings and thoughts in the style that they find most appealing.
As a sales professional, I believe that the most important trait he should have is self-confidence, because only that will lead him to professional victories and accomplishments. If he is confident in himself, he is bound to have a very strong conviction. This conviction is an essential characteristic of a sales professional. A sales professional, besides these two essential constituents, should also have a strong self-motivational attitude, which would give him a very strong ignition to go all out in his endeavor and achieve his set goals with 100% accomplishment.
I must have recruited hundreds of salespeople in the field, and my main search would always be for a young, energetic, confident man who seemed to have very good communication with a high level of conviction attached. In a brief period of interview timing, one cannot see all the traits or qualities of a person, and the type of person also cannot be observed in a short period. It is only after some time working with the same person in the field that one can discern certain other personality traits that one can only guess at first. For example, a very simple quality would be whether he was a hard-working guy. Whether he was an ardent and strong follower of the instructions or not Whether he was loyal to the organization These vital characteristics would come to the fore only when the concerned sales professional remains within the organization for some time and shows these characteristics naturally through his continued work and interactions with his colleagues.
A critical point to note here is that the same sales professional is provided with an ideal platform to develop his personality on various parameters through his work and responsibility-taking capacities in the field. It is normally said that the basic formatting of the essential constituents of personality is already established by the time the child is around 5 or 6 years old. According to Erikson, preschoolers are to develop autonomy, or self-direction, (ages 1–3), as well as initiative, or enterprise (ages 3–6). Personality includes those stable psychological characteristics that define each human being as unique.
Based on the basics already being there in one’s personality, he would merge his traits so strongly over time that they became the essential constituents of his powerful personality. Something else, also known as a sales professional, has a multifaceted personality. In simpler terms, that means he has the unique traits developed in him to tackle different situations in the field, which vary from one place to another. Our seniors in the sales profession used to tell us that one who joined the profession naturally developed a personality so strong and tactical that he became a veteran at handling different customers differently. They used to further explain it by giving the example that a salesperson meets hundreds of his customers in a time frame and that each customer normally differs from another one. Therefore, the salesperson handles all those hundreds of people single-handedly to get the business he needs from them. That further explains to what extent the salesperson could handle original characters, and this flexibility in his personality explains the strength of the salesperson. Such people, over time, naturally become veterans with a very flexible nature, which further gives them the power of endurance as well.
I have seen the sales professionals handle the national level operations of the bigger houses, and that was possible only because their background was sales. In their earlier days, they too must have developed the art of handling various characters as their customers and obtaining their desired results by procuring the required business with the shared art of having a multifaceted personality. They even master the art of delicately addressing vitally sensitive issues at the highest levels, which is reflected in their HR management. Thus, they are the efficient ones for their job of heading the organizational operations.
I would like to relate all this myself. When I was younger, I had a significant negative trait, which was the word FEAR. This word came as a big hindrance in the initial phase of my career. They say one could achieve anything but, for fear of failure, would always fail. The same thing would happen with me whether I was going for the presentation or even giving the small lectures on sales, etc. Slowly and steadily, after doing a little self-introspection, I could realize that, until that time, I was under the fear that I could do nothing concrete. I had a fantastic Sales mentor who was a very experienced and quite elderly person in charge of the company’s operational charges in the field section. Once he pointed it out to me and told me strongly that, till the time I came out of this, I could do nothing successfully. He urged me to get rid of the notion that I was afraid of something. Second, he would tell me to sit in front of a mirror and practice the lectures, “detailing,” etc. Also, he told me to go in for the daily newspaper reading and try to point out the headlines and read them aloud in front of the mirror. I was very young, and I did the same religiously, and I realized that the word “fear” was slowly and steadily coming out of my daily dealings and that my confidence levels were getting higher. I started doing it at my regional meetings also and realized that I was successful in getting back my confidence levels, and later on, it helped me a lot in making my career even better and stronger.
In a nutshell, I too developed my personality by making slight mindset changes in my thinking, and that accounts in a big way for my overall personality development.
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