What sets the best salespeople apart from the average?

For 35 years I have pursued that question. I’ve read more than 300 sales books, authored 13 of my own, worked with more than 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.

What separates the best from the masses is how they think about their profession and what practices they have instilled as habits. How they think about their profession is a topic I’ve dealt with often, and it won’t be the subject of this article. In this article 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 to which these practices are implemented, refined and repeated. The Sales Masters, then, build them into their routines and forever refine them, while the masses acknowledge them intellectually, but never make the commitment to embedding them into their routines.

With that as background, here are five of the practices that set the Sales Masters apart from everyone else.

1. Goal Setting

Of course, everyone knows about goal setting. Some salespeople are required to do it with their managers. They often see it as a tedious, irrelevant task. Others think it really doesn’t apply to them. They miss one of the hidden truths about goal setting: The purpose of setting goals is not necessarily to meet the goals!

The process of goal setting requires a person to identify the most important activities and results in their life. That alone is a worthwhile exercise that would enhance every salesperson’s focus and sense of confidence. Not only do they sort through everything to identify the highest priority, but they then put those impulses and intentions into specific written statements to which they commit. Finally, they review their progress regularly and often have an accountability person or system set up to review progress and suggest mid-term corrections and alternative strategies.

The Sales Masters understand that, regardless of whether or not they achieve their goals, they have implemented a system to keep them working on the highest priority tasks. They build a system centered on goals in order to channel their behavior most effectively.

As a result, the Sales Masters spend their time working on the highest priority tasks and invest in those things that will bring them closer to their goals. The mass slides back into reactively responding to whatever comes their way or staying within their comfort zones.

Because they are focused and intentional, the Sales Masters invest their time and energy where it will bring them the best results. And it does.

2. Ranking and Prioritizing Key Accounts

The sales masters understand that not all sales are equal and that not all customers should be invested in equally. So, they develop a system to methodically rank every account — prospects as well as customers — according to their realistic potential, and then consciously invest their sales time in the highest potential. While some of the average salespeople understand the concept, they lack the discipline to objectively rank their customers, allowing their feelings and prejudices to color their rankings.

Those salespeople who methodically apply this discipline invest at least one day every year in rating and ranking their accounts, and then make cold-blooded business decisions about in which accounts to invest their time. The results are often transformational, as the sales masters are investing their time where it will get the best results and, — amazingly — it gets better results!

It is not unusual for a salesperson to report increases of 100 to 200 percent as a result of methodically implementing this practice.

3. Master the Process of Entertaining

We all know that relationships are the heart of B2B selling. Particularly in the kind of sales process where the salesperson repeatedly calls on the same customers, the depth of the relationship can make all the difference. Sales Masters understand that they can dramatically enhance their relationships by spending time with their customers outside of the business environment.

During my days as a field salesperson, I would orchestrate baseball outings three or four times a summer, I lived in Detroit, and I would set up an event that began with dinner at Greektown followed by a Detroit Tigers baseball game. I would typically invite two customers and their spouses, and one manufacturers’ rep and their spouse, to join me and my wife. There were two rules — nobody talks business, and I pay for everything.

The evenings were always fun, everyone got to know one another better, and business in those accounts always increased — sometimes dramatically so. I can trace one two-million-dollar account directly back to one entertaining event. Entertaining, strategically and intentionally, was one of my best investments.

Sales Masters intentionally and strategically entertain their highest-potential accounts. The average salesperson doesn’t.

4. Continually Investing in Themselves

I have made this observation hundreds of times: Given any randomly selected group of 20 salespeople, only one will have invested $25 of his money on his own improvement in the past year. One out of 25 percent.

That statistic dumbfounds me. As a lifetime salesperson, I always enjoyed the challenge of continually improving — no matter how skilled a salesperson may be, they are not as good as they could be. There is always room for improvement. The Sales Masters understand that, and continually read the books, take the courses, attend the webinars, read the newsletters, listen to the podcasts, etc., in the unwavering quest for the next good idea, the next insight that could enhance their performance.

The average salesperson can’t be bothered. They will dutifully attend the company’s training programs but are pretty much convinced that they have their own style of selling and that no one is going to be able to teach them anything. So, investing in their own growth is just not something in which they are interested. It is much more comfortable to believe the illusion that they don’t need to grow and develop.

That’s why the Sales Masters become the five percenters. They gradually improve until such time as they become masters of their profession, highly skilled and incredibly valuable to their employers.

5. Obsessive Time Management

Every salesperson hears regular entreaties to use their time wisely. Only the Sales Masters become obsessed with it. In a world where we are hampered by our own comfort zones and besieged by an unrelenting deluge of distractions, using time wisely is one of the greatest challenges for salespeople.

Since it is one of the greatest challenges, it is also one of the most effective and quickest paths forward. That’s why I wrote the book, 10 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople, and then the second edition: 11 Secrets of Time Management for Salespeople.

From the point of view of someone who helps sales forces sell better, improvements in time management can make the quickest impact on a salesperson’s performance. A day spent sorting through important decisions — prioritizing accounts, creating more effective transportation routes, determining whom to see and how often — can lead to an immediate impact on productivity.

For a field salesperson, the issue of time management comes down to two questions that must be answered, not once, but multiple times in the course of the day:

• Whom should I see?
• What should I do?

Those salespeople who thoughtfully attack those questions create systems to answer them routinely and effectively. Since they are constantly working at the most effective use of their time, they naturally rise to the top. Those who give lip service to time management stay among the masses.

There are others, but these five rise to the top of the list for those practices that mark the best salespeople.

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