Clewsy

In 1991 a Xerox regional office in Atlanta had a problem. Their top salesperson was doing $4.2 million a year. Their second best was doing $800,000. Everyone else was below $400,000. Same products. Same territory split. Same commission structure. Same manager. The VP of sales flew in and spent three days trying to understand what the top performer was doing differently. He watched him make calls. Sat in on meetings. Reviewed his pipeline. He couldn't find it. The guy didn't seem to work harder. Didn't seem smarter. Didn't have better accounts. Then he watched him walk into a cold meeting with a procurement director who had already said no twice. He didn't pitch. He didn't present. He sat down, opened a notebook, and said one sentence. Before I show you anything, I'd like to ask you a few questions about what's actually slowing your team down. Forty minutes later he had a $340,000 deal. The VP flew home and hired Brian Tracy. Tracy had spent 25 years studying exactly what that salesperson did instinctively. He had walked into rooms where every single person on straight commission was making over a quarter million dollars a year. Most of them were making over a million. He interviewed them all. Studied every pattern. Spent thousands of hours finding what separated the top 10% from everyone else. His conclusion was not what most people expected. 80% of sales success is psychological. 20% is technical. Most companies do only technical training. 70% of companies do no sales training at all. They hand people a brochure and say good luck. The Xerox salesperson in Atlanta was not smarter. He had simply figured out one thing that most salespeople never figure out. He did not see himself as a salesperson. Do customers like salespeople? No. Because salespeople represent someone who is going to fast-talk and maneuver and sell them something they don't need with money they don't have. Do customers like consultants? Always. Because a consultant walks in with one question. What is your problem and how can I help you solve it. Within 30 seconds of meeting a prospect the prospect knows which one they're dealing with. Tracy said there is no way to fake this. The way you see yourself determines how you walk, talk, ask questions and listen. The customer feels it before you open your mouth. Top salespeople also see themselves as doctors of selling. Doctors never skip steps. Examination. Diagnosis. Prescription. In that order. Every time. A doctor who prescribes before diagnosing is committing malpractice. A salesperson who presents before understanding the problem is committing exactly the same thing. Except the customer just calls it a reason not to buy. The new model of selling is an upside-down triangle. 40% of the sale is building trust. 30% is identifying the problem. 20% is presenting the solution. 10% is closing. The old model had it reversed. 40% closing. That's why it stopped working. He asked thousands of customers across his career to describe their favorite salespeople in one word. The number one answer across every industry was the same. Nice. Not smart. Not aggressive. Not persuasive. Nice. When he asked what they meant they said positive, easy to talk to, trustworthy. I like them. I feel good when they walk in. He said everything you do with a customer adds to or takes away from that feeling. Nothing is neutral. Everything counts. The Xerox salesperson in Atlanta retired at 51. The VP who hired Tracy said it was the best $40,000 the company ever spent. Tracy recorded the full seminar in the early 1990s. Free on YouTube. Just over an hour. Almost nobody outside of professional sales has watched it as a complete explanation of why two people in the same office with the same product end up in completely different income brackets for their entire careers.