Dr. Stephen Covey built an industry out of his book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” and others have followed in his steps. Of the books that followed in a steady stream, perhaps “Seven Sins for a Life Worth Living” is the most intriguing, and one that many people may be tempted not only to buy but to actually read.

To carry it a step further, what about the strategies of highly effective salespeople? What makes them different and why do they stand out from the pack? Business experts point to these seven habits:

This may seem like a ridiculous statement, but effective salespeople operate by it intuitively. The major “product” they bring to the table is what they know about customers, not what they sell.

While product knowledge is important, it's only the baseline. Customer knowledge makes them different. Author and financial services expert Matt Oechsli drives the point home. “For years,” he says, “I have been saying to anyone who will listen, 'If you are serious about working with the affluent, you must become a student of the affluent.'”

It's the same in every industry. Too many salespeople like to think of themselves as “solution experts.” What they fail to recognize is that the solution rests with the customer, not with the salesperson. Customers know the issues and understand the problems. What customers need is a way to make the solution a reality.

TriFactor Inc., the Lakeland, Fla.-based material handling systems distributor, operates on this premise. In the company's customer agreement, there is a revealing sentence: “The customer and TriFactor Inc. will jointly design the particular material handling system.” The operative word is “jointly.” TriFactor's sales engineers bring their expertise to bear on making certain the “solution” meets the customer's requirements.

Here's the skinny: Most salespeople think they're much better presenters than they are. There's a reason for this: Facing up to the fact that we're poor presenters is threatening, even shattering.

Effective salespeople can be excellent presenters if they work at it. Richard Valeriani, the long-time NBC correspondent, tells of working with General Electric CEO Jack Welch on Welch's retirement speech. Despite his years of experience, Welch was not about to let down the bar just because he was giving his final presentation. He still needed to work at it.

Carmine Gallo, a business communications coach and former TV journalist, recently analyzed Steve Jobs' introduction of Apple's iPhone.

Writing in Business Week, he notes, “Jobs makes presentations look effortless because he takes nothing for granted. Jobs is known to rehearse demonstrations for hours prior to launch events.” And then Gallo adds, “I can name many high-profile chief executives who decide to wing it. It shows.”

Jobs demands perfection in the products Apple sells and nothing less than that in the way he presents them. Effective salespeople hone their presentation skills.

We might say embracing new ideas is the norm. In “We Are Smarter Than Me,” Barry Libert and Jon Spector tell of A.G. Lafley's arrival as chairman and CEO at Procter & Gamble in 2000.

“He stunned his prideful researchers, all 9,000 of them in R&D, when he said that they were not producing enough winners to meet the company's growth goals. Then he shocked this vaunted group when he told them that, 'by the end of the decade, fully half of all new P&G products and technologies would have to come from outside the company.'”

Lafley set into motion a system of sharing information, leveraging retired scientists and engineers and tapping into InnoCentive, the network of more than 100,000 technical people from nearly 200 countries who receive cash awards if their ideas pay off.

According to one report, 35 percent of P&G's ideas were coming from outsiders by 2006. Equally important, the company's R&D productivity increased 60 percent and 80 percent of its new product launches are successful compared to the 30 percent industry average.

Here's the point: Salespeople don't burn out; they make themselves irrelevant by failing to see change as opportunity.

Customers know when they are being hustled by the salesperson whose sole objective is to walk away with an order.

Toward the end of the year, a business owner received a call from a business equipment salesperson indicating that the cost of color copier supplies would be nearly tripling within a few weeks.

“If you want to order at the current price, we have a supply in inventory,” he said.

Whatever the facts, how did the message sound? Candidly, like someone who was trying to make his numbers by year's end. There were no explanations, no options and no suggestions. There was no effort to be helpful.

Helping is the overarching strategy of effective salespeople.

The day of “get the order and get going” is gone. If that's all a salesperson has to offer, the smart customer goes elsewhere.

If you've ever bought a life insurance policy, chances are you didn't hear from the salesperson again. This is an example of the “just get the fish in the boat” mentality. Their focus is on making the sale, not on creating a relationship that has long-term potential.

Customers sense when they are being hustled; they catch on quickly and won't tolerate such tactics. Even though they may need what is being offered, they refuse to buy from salespeople whose motives are so clearly transparent.

Without such a customer relationship vision, there is no future.

The holiday greeting card arrived in the mail with a photograph of a group of employees on the outside. Over the photo

were the words, “Season's Greetings from Your Team.”

Hold on a minute. That's their team, not mine.

Was the card anything other than a friendly gesture? Perhaps not. At the same time, it may reflect the underlying attitude of so many businesses and particularly a large group of salespeople. We say that it's “all about the customer,” but what comes through is quite a different message––it's really all about us.

This is an overarching danger in business, including sales. We say the right words about being customer-centric, but the real message comes through and it betrays our customer commitment: “We come first.”

The highly effective salesperson never falls into that trap.

Why does Toyota sell more vehicles every year? The 2007 J.D. Power “Customer Retention Study” offers insight into Toyota's success.

“Toyota maintains its high retention rates by providing high-quality vehicles and service to its existing customers,” says J.D. Power's Neal Oddes, “which in turn generates favorable word-of-mouth recommendations that attract new customers.”

The report indicates that 64 percent of Toyota's customers say they are staying with the nameplate.

If Toyota were to rewrite Chevrolet Malibu's “The car you can't ignore” ad headline, it might go something like this––“The car you're glad you bought.”

This is exactly how the effective salesperson behaves every day.

When it comes to selling, the major task for the highly effective salesperson is not to meet or beat the numbers, but to hone those qualities that deliver the right results.