Five Higher-Order Sales Practices that Most salespeople Never Master

by Dave Kahle

What sets the best salespeople apart from the average?

     For 35 years I have pursued that question.  .I’ve read over 300 sales books, authored 13 of my own, worked with over 500 sales organizations, talked with thousands of sales managers and  executives, and trained tens of thousands of B2B salespeople to sell better. 

     I believe I have an answer.  But, first, let’s define our terms. 

     The best salespeople are the top five percent in their industry.  These are the people who are so far above the mass in their performance that they will often produce about 50 percent of the sales force’s total revenue, with the other 95 percent of salespeople producing the other half.  So, for example, a salesforce of 100 will likely have about five Sales Masters among them.  A salesforce of 20 might have one.  I call them Sales Masters, or Five Percenters.

    Much of my career has involved identifying the practice of the top five percent – the Sales Masters.

     What sets them apart is not their education, their personality, their experience, their gender, their race, their age, the company they work for, the industry they work in or the product they sell.  Each of these can have some marginal impact on a salesperson’s performance, but they aren’t near the heart of the issue. 

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     What separates the best from the masses is how they think about their professions and what  practices they have instilled as habits. How they think about their professions is a topic I’ve dealt with often, and it won’t be the subject of this post.  In this post, I’m focusing on the practices that the best methodically master and intentionally embed into their routines so that they become habits.

     Some of these practices may seem totally foreign to the mass of salespeople.  They may have never heard about that practice, and it has just never occurred to them.

     Most, however, are marginally acknowledged by many salespeople, but not given priority in their routines.  Who doesn’t know about goal setting for example? And, while every salesperson has heard somewhere about the benefits of a focused, disciplined approach to goal setting, less than five percent actually do it.

     When presented with the practice at a seminar or training session, the masses will nod knowingly –“Oh yeah,  I know that” — but never do it.  The Sales Masters, at the same seminar, will show me their system of setting goals and solicit my ideas for doing it better.

     So, some of the five percenter habits are part of every salesperson’s lexicon, they are just not implemented with a commitment to excellence.  The difference between the Five Percenters and the rest is the degree... READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE