The people who think that sales success is all about numbers know nothing about selling!
Sure, if I am digging a ditch and I can dig three feet of dirt an hour, then two people digging a ditch can dig six feet per hour. That is a fact and that is what people are talking about when they say that selling is all numbers. These people will tell you that if a salesperson makes twenty telephone cold calls per hour and closes one in every twenty calls then if the same salesperson makes forty calls an hour they will double the sales.
This is stupid! And any business that runs on this principle will stay small and pay too much for every sale!
The best salespeople do not work more they work smarter and the best sales managers and companies support this approach!
If you are in the digging ditch business it might make sense to have two or three people digging ditches but at a certain point your business is going to invest in a machine that will dig thirty feet in an hour. That is smart!
The best salespeople do not sell more, they sell smarter, they sell better and they close faster.
It is a statistical fact that the best salespeople in any industry will earn sixteen times what the average salesperson earns and they don’t do it working harder. They do it by finding better, bigger customers who can spend more money.
In every business there is the twenty percent of the customers that generate eighty percent of the business. The best salespeople learn to focus on the big spenders, the whales! The next thing the best salespeople do is to get better at what they do than anybody else. They learn the business inside outside and invest in getting better and knowing more than anybody. They invest in themselves and build the skills and get the tools to close more, bigger business, faster.
That is how they become the best and that is how they earn sixteen times more than the average!
It does not take a rocket scientist to figure out what having one, two or three of these performers could do for your businesses. It would transform your business into a market leader. These salespeople are out there – in fact, they are not that difficult to hire. Sure, they cost more but they have the track record to support the investment.
The reality is, however, that most businesses do not want to hire these star performers and those that do tend to get rid of them because they cannot manage salespeople who insist on working differently. You don’t get star results with average activity.
I guess, in the end, most of us are just comfortable with average.