Do you know what separates the most
successful salespeople from everyone else?
Well, there is a very small group
of top performing salespeople
who are out-earning
and outselling everyone else
many times over.
And what's so cool to someone in my position
is that I get to actually see
what they're doing in today's marketplace.
These people basically have
all of the same skillsets and approaches
to win those much larger sales more consistently.
In this video we will see
if you have the 11 critical sales skills
all successful salespeople must have.
Check it out.
Number one, they engage prospects
to discuss their business challenges.
This is one of the pieces of data
that we've recently discovered
is really outstanding,
the difference between top performers
and even average or in most cases bottom performers.
And what we found is that top performers
are much more effective at engaging prospects
to really talk about business challenges.
And they do so in a way where
they're literally asking about twice as many
business-related questions as their counterparts.
And so what we see here
is that if you want to be
in that top tier of salespeople,
we can't be thinking about just
how are we selling our product,
but we have to be thinking about
how are we understanding
the business challenges
that our prospects are facing.
Are we thinking big picture?
Are we thinking about the real value
that your solution truly offers?
Because at the end of the day,
what you are selling
is not a product or a service,
but a solution
to the prospect's business challenges.
Number two, they come off as a real human being.
This is really counter to what most of us
have been taught over the years as far as
how we should present ourselves to the prospect.
Most of us were taught that when
you get in front of a prospect,
you need to be high energy,
you need to be excited,
you need to be jazzed.
And what we've learned is that top performers
are actually behaving in a way that's just real.
It's very authentic.
In fact I just recently came across a video
of an artificial intelligence algorithm
pretending to be a real person on a phone call.
And what I noticed that was so obvious
was that the artificial intelligence algorithm
that's talking doesn't sound perfect.
They're saying um, they're saying ah,
they're being a little imperfect,
and that's what makes them sound real.
They're not excited, they're just down-to-earth.
Now to be clear, I'm not saying that we wanna be like
an artificial intelligence algorithm.
But what's interesting is that obviously
the people designing that program
understood that what is real
is just sounding normal,
it's sounding genuine.
And when we as salespeople come off as truly real,
as a normal human being,
people are much more likely
to actually engage with us
in that conversation.
Number three, appear as the distinct expert.
This is one of the pieces of data that
I found in our internal research
in a study that we recently did of salespeople
is that top performers see themself as the expert.
And as a result of seeing themselves as the expert,
they come off as truly the distinct expert.
And so it's a little bit of chicken or the egg.
You get to start by seeing yourself as the expert,
and then what we have to do is start to think about
what are our competitors doing,
and how can we do the exact opposite
when we're in front of our prospects.
So think for a second,
how are we presenting?
Are coming off as high energy, excited?
Or are we coming off as just
that down-to-earth distinct expert,
that doctor who's engaging that prospect
in a real type of a conversation?
What you're going to find
is that distinction actually comes
by being just really genuine and real.
Number four, they don't push their prospects to buy.
This again goes completely counter
to what most of us have been taught.
If you remember seeing those great old movies
like Boiler Room or Glengarry Glen Ross, right?
There's always this magical moment
right at the end of the sales presentation
where the salesperson comes in
and is basically pushing the prospect to buy,
and the prospect is coming up with objections
and all the reasons why they can't do it,
and the tough good salesperson is coming back
with all the ways to overcome,
and ultimately they buy,
and it's like an arm wrestling match.
And this is what a lot of salespeople are doing.
They think that when they're getting pushback
from a prospect as to why they shouldn't buy,
their goal is to push back even harder.
The reality is that top performers
aren't pushing their prospects to buy.
Instead what they're doing
is they're addressing
any types of objections up front.
They're understanding any reasons
why the prospect might not actually
want to buy in the first place
or any concerns that the prospect has.
So they're actually dealing with any objections
early on in the situation,
and they're just digging into them.
They're asking questions about it.
They're saying, "Help me understand why you say that."
Understanding why a prospect
is either interested or not interested,
or has this need or that need,
getting that full picture is what makes us the expert,
and therefore prospects
are much more inclined to actually buy.
Number five, they consistently add to their pipeline.
Now this sounds almost obvious,
but what we see
is that top performers are not
getting into the office each day and saying,
"What do I have to do today to drum up sales?"
They're not going out and servicing clients for a month,
and so they're not selling for that month,
and then they get into this
kind of cycle of the ups and downs.
Top performers tend to be much more consistent
about adding to their pipeline each and everyday.
I spoke to one of the top performing sales reps at HubSpot
just a couple of months ago,
and what he said is,
"I don't leave the office
"until I've added two opportunities
"to my pipeline each and everyday."
And I thought to myself
that is the most beautiful summation
of a top performing mindset.
Now he was selling something different than you,
so maybe adding two opportunities each day is more
or maybe it's less than what you need to be doing.
But what is that number?
How many opportunities do you need to be adding
each and everyday to your pipeline
or each and every week to your pipeline
in order to ensure that you're going to hit your numbers?
Get very clear on that.
How many meetings do you have to set?
And think about consistency.
Think more like the tortoise
who's just taking one step at a time
as opposed to that hare
who's running here, running there,
and going in all different directions.
We want to just take consistent steps each and everyday.
Number six is willing to sell higher up.
One of the biggest distinctions that I see in my work
day in and day out between top performers and everyone else
is that top performers have the guts,
they have courage to sell really high up
within an organization.
And so that doesn't just mean calling on the CEO,
but it also means selling to bigger opportunities.
It means selling to bigger companies.
It means to create big opportunities.
And the way we do that is by going big.
Average performers tend to hit lots of singles or doubles
where they're just piecing together a living.
Top performers are going for the bigger opportunities.
And what you find time and time again is that
big opportunities take just as much work
as those average opportunities
or those smaller opportunities,
but the reward for those bigger opportunities
is so much bigger.
So this is both a mindset and a tactical shift.
What are you doing to make sure that you're selling
higher and higher and higher up the ladder
so that way you are making bigger sales
and you're selling bigger solutions.
Number seven, dialogue over monologue.
Now we all have been told for many years that
we need to be asking questions,
we need to engage people in conversations.
I get it, you've heard this a million times.
But actually there's really some very new data
that shows that top performers
are actually doing a lot more dialogue
than one-way monologue,
and in particular in the presentation phase, right?
In the discovery phase
we all know that we have to be asking questions,
but what we see a big shift in
is when we get to the actual presentation phase
is that average performers tend to go on monologues,
they just start talking and talking and talking
for extended periods of time
presenting the features and the benefits and all of this,
whereas top performers continue that to a dialogue
even in the presentation.
And this is really profound.
What we can actually see is that
there are organizations
that have studied top performers
and what they see is that top performers
have a lot more speaker switches
in the presentation phase.
And when a speaker switches
is literally I speak then you speak,
I speak, you speak.
Each time we switch,
that's a speaker switch.
Top performers are engaging their prospects
even throughout the presentation.
So it's more of a back and forth
as opposed to just that one way
I'm gonna show you the top 10 reasons
that you need to work with me,
it's much more of a
hey let me show you one idea,
does that make sense?
And back and forth.
Huge huge distinction has really profound results.
Number eight, they understand the upside value.
And what we see here is that
there's a really important distinction between
telling a prospect what the ROI for the solution is
versus helping the prospect actually do their own math.
And so what we see is with top performers,
they're asking questions that basically bake in
the upside value of their solution.
So let me give you an example.
Alright so they're engaging a prospect
around their solutions,
let's say, you work for a marketing company,
and so you're selling a marketing solution,
and so you're talking to the prospect
and you're asking them about their marketing challenges,
and they're saying, "Oh yeah,
"we feel like our brand is not out there enough,"
or, "We're not getting as many leads as we'd like."
And so a lot of salespeople would say,
"Well, our solution can help you get more leads
"which will lead to an ROI of blah blah blah."
Instead what a top performer is doing is
when they're understanding the challenges,
they're saying, "Well, help me understand,
"if you are able to
"get as many leads
"as you're really focused on,
"your goal number of leads,
"what would that lead to in more business?"
And now the prospect is actually doing
the math in their head, and they're saying,
"Ha, well, we're at the leads that we're at right now,
"and if we're able to get this many more,
"man, I mean that can be a couple million dollars
"in additional business."
Time out.
That's exactly what we want to get to.
We want to get them to do that math to understand
what the real value of the solution is,
not the value of your product or your service,
but the value of the overall solution
which now you're intrinsically tying yourself
to that exact component,
understand the upside value.
Number nine, talk budget later in the process.
This again was one of the more recent findings
that I have found
in some really powerful data that shows
that top performers are actually
discussing money and budget
later in the sales process
than average and bottom performing reps.
And so what we see is that average and bottom performers
are talking money and budget
typically much earlier in the process,
so what it means is that they're basically
coming out with a price
or talking price pretty early in that process,
and what top performers are doing
is they're actually talking budget
later in the discovery process.
And so what you see is that
top performers are basically
building value throughout the conversation,
they're asking questions, understanding the challenges,
understanding the upside, all of these things,
and then they're discussing budget later on in the process.
Now if you're familiar with my selling system,
if you've read any of my books,
if you've gone through any of my programs,
you'll understand that that's exactly
what we've taught for years,
but now what we see is that the data
supports this exact same idea.
Top performers are talking budget later in the process.
Number 10, don't fight objections.
Now we talked about this a little bit earlier as well,
but what we see is that top performers
don't fight back when they get objections.
They're not getting into that arm wrestling match
where it's a back and forth,
and it's a test of wills.
Instead what we see a top performing is doing is
they're addressing objections early on,
they wanna understand
what the prospect's concerns are
early on in the process,
and if they get any objections,
they're not pushing back,
they're not coming up with some savvy response,
instead they're just saying,
"Tell me more about why you say that,"
or, "Why do you ask that question?"
or, "That sounds like a great plan.
"It sounds important to you.
"Help me understand," right?
They're getting it all out on the table,
they're understanding why the prospect is saying that,
and then they're not fighting it,
but instead they're just going
right back into the discovery process.
Huge distinction
between average performers
and everyone else,
everyone else is going in
and they're fighting the objections.
Don't fight the objections.
Think of it like Tai Chi
where you're taking the energy with you
and you're pushing it in a different direction.
That's exactly what we wanna be doing.
Number 11, they discuss next steps.
This is so key and it's so simple,
yet so many salespeople aren't really doing it
to the degree that they should be.
The data shows that top performers
are spending more time in the sales process
just specifically discussing clear next steps.
Now I've been teaching this for years,
and we've always known anecdotally that works,
but now we see that there's a real clear distinction
between top performers and everyone else.
Top performers spend a specific amount of time
typically later on in the conversation
to discuss what is the exact clear next step.
Alright so you're in the discovery call
and you're not ready to present
as a result of the conversation,
and instead of just saying,
"Hey, well, would it be okay
"if I called you next week
"to set up a time
"to have a presentation,
"or what if I email you
"some times that'll work?"
Instead the top performers
are getting that clear next step
scheduled on that existing call.
Huge huge distinction.
You will always wanna be scheduling that next step
in the current conversation
while you have them in front of you.
Every single prospect has their calendar on them
because it's on their phone.
So get that clear next step,
get it scheduled,
get it on the calendar.
So there are the 11 critical sales skills
all successful salespeople have.
I wanna hear from you.
Which of these ideas did you find most useful?
Be sure to share below in the Comments section
to get involved in the conversation.
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