BECOME A SALES SUPERSTAR

By Tom Reilly, author of Value-Added Selling

If you want to be the best, benchmark the best. Three decades of studying top-achieving salespeople—the best of the best—reveals patterns of behavior that serve as benchmarks for the rest of the sales population. Simply copying what they do is not enough, but knowing what they do is a great starting point.

Here’s what our research has found:

They are organized. Top-achievers run their territories versus their territories running them. Eighty-five percent of them plan their weeks in advance with an itinerary. Ninety-five percent routinely plan their sales calls. Less than 10% of the general sales population plans this way. Planning will not guarantee your success, but the lack of planning assures your failure.

They are good at the people stuff. Top-achievers attribute 79% of their success to their personal relationships with customers. Their sales managers describe them as strong relationship builders who invest personal time with their customers. They invest 60% of their time on sales calls listening to their customers. They spend more time probing than presenting. When you understand customers’ needs, you don’t need to tell them everything you know about your products.

They are busy. In our latest study of sales practices, we discovered that top-achievers spend twice as much face time with customers as the general sales population. More face time means more sales.

Benchmarking is a useful strategy to assess your own best practices. Knowing that superstars organize, build strong relationships, and make more calls than the rest of the sales population offers you a great place to launch your own sales success.

Check out Tom Reilly’s new book, The Humility Paradox. You may read more about this at AMAZON or visit us online at www.TomReillyTraining.com.