5 Habits That Make a Great Salesperson in B2B Today

A great salesperson is not the loudest talker in the room. The best ones research before they reach out, ask better discovery questions than competitors, qualify honestly, follow up with discipline and treat coaching as fuel. These five habits can be learned, measured and repeated, which is why they matter more than natural charisma.

Key takeaways

  • Preparation beats improvisation: spend time on the buyer's business before the first call.
  • Discovery is the core skill; a strong pitch built on weak discovery still loses.
  • Disqualifying poor-fit deals early protects your time and your forecast.
  • Follow-up that adds value earns replies; generic "just checking in" notes do not.
  • Coachable reps improve faster because they review their own calls and act on feedback.

Why do these habits matter for a sales career?

Sales remains one of the largest occupational groups in the US. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported about 13.4 million sales and related workers in May 2024, and wages vary widely: sales engineers and technical wholesale representatives earn far more than retail roles. The gap is largely about complexity. The more complex the purchase, the more the habits below decide who wins.

Individual habits also feed team results. If you are a sales leader, the same behaviors show up in the traits described in our guide to the characteristics that build a high performance sales team.

Habit 1 and 2: Research first, then run real discovery

Research the account before you reach out

Before a first call, a strong rep can answer four questions: what the company sells, how it makes money, what has changed recently (a new leader, an acquisition, a hiring push, a regulation), and which role you are speaking with. Fifteen minutes on the company's website, annual report or press page is usually enough. The goal is not to recite facts back to the buyer but to ask sharper questions.

Ask questions that uncover the problem behind the request

Buyers often arrive with a solution in mind. Discovery is the work of finding the problem underneath it, the cost of leaving it unsolved, who else is affected and what a decision process looks like. Useful prompts include: "What happens if nothing changes this year?", "Who else feels this problem?" and "What did you try before?" Listen more than you talk, and summarize what you heard before proposing anything.

Habit 3: Qualify honestly and walk away when you should

Average salespeople chase every opportunity. Great ones decide early whether a deal is real. A simple checklist helps.

QuestionHealthy signalWarning sign
Is there a defined problem?Buyer can describe its impactVague interest, no pain named
Is there a decision maker involved?Economic buyer has met youOnly a researcher, no access upward
Is there a timeline?Tied to an event or deadline"Sometime next year"
Is there budget or a path to it?Budget line or approval process knownNo one knows who pays
Do they have a next step?Date on the calendar"We'll get back to you"

Two or more warning signs mean the deal needs work or needs to leave your forecast. Honest qualification makes your pipeline numbers credible, which managers notice when they measure the success of a sales team.

Habit 4: Follow up with value and keep clean records

Most deals need several touches. The difference is whether each touch gives the buyer something useful: a short recap of the last call, an answer to a question they raised, a relevant example, or a draft agenda for the next meeting. Avoid messages that only ask whether they have made a decision.

Discipline here depends on your records. Log every call, next step and stakeholder in your CRM the same day, while details are fresh. Reps who keep good notes forecast better and hand off accounts cleanly. If your team underuses its system, the ideas in how to maximize your CRM to boost sales are a practical place to start.

Habit 5: Stay coachable and review your own calls

Top performers treat each lost deal as data. After an important call, spend five minutes answering three questions: what went well, where the buyer hesitated and what you would ask differently. If your company records calls, listen to one of your own each week. Ask your manager for one specific improvement rather than general praise, and practice it on your next three calls.

Common mistakes that hold reps back:

  • Pitching features before understanding the problem.
  • Talking past the buyer's objection instead of asking what is behind it.
  • Keeping dead deals in the pipeline to look busy.
  • Skipping preparation for "easy" follow-up calls.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the most important skill for a salesperson?

Discovery is usually the most important skill. A salesperson who understands the buyer's problem, its cost and the decision process can shape a relevant proposal, handle objections calmly and forecast accurately. Presentation and closing skills matter, but they depend on the quality of what you learned during discovery. Without it, even a polished pitch misses what the buyer actually needs.

Can introverts become great salespeople?

Yes. Many effective salespeople are introverts because the core habits reward listening, preparation and careful follow-up rather than constant talking. Introverts often ask thoughtful questions and let buyers finish their thoughts, which builds trust. The main adjustment is planning energy: block time for recovery between heavy call days and prepare questions in advance so conversations feel natural.

How long does it take to get good at sales?

It depends on the complexity of what you sell. A rep in a simple, transactional role may feel confident within a few months, while complex B2B sales with long cycles can take a year or more to master. Progress speeds up when you review your own calls, track your conversion at each stage and work on one skill at a time.

Next steps

  • Pick one habit from this list and practice it deliberately for the next two weeks.
  • Run the qualification checklist on every open deal and remove the ones that fail.
  • Schedule a weekly 20-minute self-review of one recorded or noted call.
  • Ask your manager for one specific coaching point each month.

Last reviewed: October 2026.

Sources

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Why Workday Onboarding Breaks Down for Frontline Employees

Image
The Onboarding Gap Nobody Talks About Workday's onboarding module is well-designed for its intended audience: office-based, desk workers with reliable computer access, personal email addresses, and the digital literacy to navigate a web-based portal. For this population, Workday onboarding works well, it automates tasks, routes approvals, collects documents, and creates a reasonably smooth first-week experience. But most organizations using Workday have a substantial population of frontline workers: warehouse employees, retail staff, manufacturing workers, healthcare aides, food service workers, drivers. For this population, the standard Workday onboarding experience frequently fails in ways that are predictable, documented, and, crucially, fixable. Understanding why it breaks down and what actually works is increasingly urgent as labor market competition for frontline talent intensifies. How Standard Workday Onboarding Is Designed Workday's new hire onboarding (delivered throu...
Read more

How to Improve the Customer Experience (CX)

Customer experience is the sum of every interaction a customer has with your company, from the first ad they see to the way a return gets handled years after the purchase. Companies that take this seriously outperform those that treat CX as a support function. The ones that struggle tend to confuse customer satisfaction scores with actual improvements, or fix the wrong things. Here's a practical look at what actually moves CX forward. Start with where customers actually struggle Most CX improvement programs begin with surveys. Surveys are useful but limited, they capture what customers are willing to articulate after the fact, which tends to under-report friction in the middle of an experience and over-index on the most recent interaction. The richer data comes from observing behavior directly: where do customers drop off in a purchase flow? Where do support tickets spike? What search queries are people entering on your site that suggest they can't find what they're loo...
Read more

How Do I Log In and Sign In to Workday HCM

Workday HCM is the system your organization uses to manage everything from your pay stubs and benefits to time off requests and performance reviews. Getting in is usually simple once you know where to go, but first-time login, password resets, and single sign-on setups can trip people up if no one has walked them through it. Here's what you need to know. How to find your Workday login URL Workday doesn't have one universal login page. Each organization has its own tenant, a dedicated instance with a unique URL. Your company's HR department or IT team should have provided the URL when you were onboarded. It usually looks something like your-company.workday.com or wd3.myworkday.com/yourcompany . If you weren't given the URL, check your onboarding email, your company's intranet, or ask HR directly. Some organizations also link to Workday from their internal HR portal. Don't try to guess the URL, there's no central directory, and guessing wrong just takes...
Read more

UKG Union Contract and Overtime Rules for Multi-Site Food Plants

Multi-site food manufacturers running UKG often struggle with one thing: each plant has its own union contract, shift pattern and overtime rules, while the timekeeping system is configured centrally. The fix: document every contract rule precisely, map it to UKG pay rules and work rules, test against real timecards, and handle true exceptions with add-ons rather than core customization. Disclosure: The author works at CloudApper, which makes the UKG add-ons discussed in this article. Why are union contracts so hard to configure in UKG? Federal law sets a floor. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, non-exempt employees must receive at least one and a half times their regular rate for hours worked over 40 in a workweek. Collective bargaining agreements frequently go further, and food plants often have several agreements across locations. Common contract provisions include: Daily overtime after 8 hours, or after 10 on a four-day schedule. Double time on the seventh consecutive day o...
Read more

Infor HCM Software Engineer Jobs: Salary Factors and Skills

An Infor HCM software engineer's salary depends mostly on the type of employer, the depth of Infor platform knowledge, and location. Engineers who combine general software skills with hands-on experience in Infor CloudSuite HCM, Lawson, Infor ION integrations and payroll logic tend to command more than generalist developers, because that combination is scarce in the job market. What does an Infor HCM software engineer actually do? The title covers several different jobs, and pay follows the job more than the title. Broadly, these engineers build, configure, integrate and support the Infor human capital management stack, which includes core HR, payroll, benefits, talent management and workforce management. Many organizations still run the older on-premises Infor Lawson system alongside or instead of the cloud suite, so experience with both is common. Typical responsibilities include: Building and maintaining integrations between Infor HCM and payroll providers, benefits carrie...
Read more

How to Search in Workday: Find Reqs, Reports, People and Tasks

To search in Workday, type into the global search bar at the top of any page, press Enter, then use the category filters on the left of the results to narrow to people, organizations, tasks and reports or other object types. Workday only returns items your security roles allow you to see, so missing results often mean an access issue rather than a typo. How does Workday search work? Workday uses a single global search box rather than separate menus for each module. Everything in the tenant, from a worker's profile to a job requisition to a custom report, is an object that search can find if you have permission to view it. Three points explain most search behavior: Security trimming. Results are filtered by your security groups. A recruiter and a payroll partner typing the same term will see different results. Categories. After you press Enter, results are grouped into categories that appear as filters. Clicking one hides everything else. Related actions. Once you open an...
Read more

ERP Solution Guide: How to Choose the Best ERP for You

What Is an ERP System and Why Does It Matter? An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is software that integrates the core functions of a business — finance, inventory, procurement, human resources, manufacturing, and customer management — into a single, connected platform. Instead of data living in separate spreadsheets or standalone applications that don't talk to each other, an ERP creates one source of truth for the entire organization. For growing companies, the question is usually not whether they need an ERP but when and which one. Getting this decision right has long-term consequences. A poorly chosen ERP creates more problems than it solves — forcing teams to work around the system, creating data integrity issues, and consuming IT resources in an endless cycle of customization and maintenance. A well-chosen ERP, on the other hand, becomes the operational backbone that lets a company scale without proportionally growing its administrative overhead. Understandin...
Read more

The End of Remote Work: Why Companies Want You Back

Return to Office: The Trend Reshaping the Modern Workplace After years of celebrating the remote work revolution, a powerful counter-movement has taken hold. Amazon, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Disney, and hundreds of other organizations have issued return-to-office (RTO) mandates, some requiring full five-day-a-week presence. The era of near-universal remote work flexibility appears to be giving way to something more complicated, and HR leaders are at the center of navigating it. Why Companies Are Calling Employees Back Collaboration and Innovation: Many executives argue that the serendipitous interactions, the hallway conversation, the spontaneous whiteboard session, that drive breakthrough ideas simply cannot be replicated on Zoom. Studies from Stanford and MIT suggest that in-person collaboration produces measurably higher rates of novel idea generation. Culture and Cohesion: Building and sustaining organizational culture at a distance has proven harder than anticipated. N...
Read more

The Future of Employee Healthcare Key Concerns and Strategies for 2024

In a rapidly evolving professional landscape, employers are grappling with an array of challenges as they plan employee-sponsored healthcare strategies for 2024. A recent survey conducted in the US in August 2023 sheds light on the primary concerns and emerging trends in the realm of employee healthcare. Mental health, healthcare costs, pharmacy expenditures, and transformative technologies are at the forefront of employer considerations, signaling a need for comprehensive and innovative approaches to employee well-being. Rising Mental Health Concerns A staggering seven in 10 employers reported a surge in mental health concerns, marking a significant uptick from the previous year. With 77% of employers experiencing an increase and an additional 16% anticipating future challenges, the mental health landscape is a top priority. The implications of the ongoing pandemic, remote work dynamics, and societal shifts are evident as employers grapple with addressing and supporting the mental ...
Read more

How Digital Marketing Helps Your Business Grow: A Practical Plan

Digital marketing helps a business grow by putting it in front of buyers at the moment they search, compare and decide, then measuring which efforts produce revenue. Search, content, email, paid ads and social channels let even small teams reach targeted audiences, test messages cheaply and shift budget toward what works, something print and broadcast advertising rarely allow. How does digital marketing actually drive business growth? Growth comes from three levers: reaching more of the right people, converting more of them into customers and keeping those customers longer. Digital channels touch all three. Reach. Search engines, professional networks and industry newsletters connect you with people already looking for what you sell. Conversion. Clear landing pages, case examples and easy contact options turn interest into conversations. Retention. Email, customer education content and community channels keep existing customers engaged and open to expansion. The underlying ...
Read more