Last year, I was asked to analyse and review two salespeople. There was a problem. The client and I wanted to understand exactly what drove the performance differences between them.
On the surface, the two staff looked identical, or at least they had similar backgrounds and experience levels. Their ‘territories’ were nearly identical, with a focus on new accounts.
They had been through the same training, used the same tools, and worked under the same commission scheme. They even had the same manager, who did a decent job of coaching them both. But their results were profoundly different.
One consistently beat her goals. Year over year, she would meet and exceed her budget. Sometimes she barely made it, sometimes she blew past it. While her sales results varied, her success and over achievement were consistent.
On the other hand, the other salesperson was capable, but his performance was inconsistent. One year, he barely beat his budget; the next year was a big miss. The following year, he hit 87 per cent, followed by another significant miss the last year.
The conundrum was simple: What caused the difference? They were selling the same products to similar customers with the same support, training, tools, and coaching.
Obviously, there had to be something else, but what was it?
Mind over matter
The most obvious answer was their mindsets and behaviours; however, when we began to dig deeper, we found how different the two people really were.
The top performer was always curious. When she hit a roadblock, she didn’t stop; she experimented and was intensely customer focused.
She didn’t just pitch products; she focused on what the customer was trying to achieve. In every deal, she learned and adapted.
Crucially, she never made excuses, and when she ‘lost’ a sale, she didn’t blame the product or the price; she looked at what she could change and how for next time.
She was disciplined enough to do the tedious work—the internal approvals, the procurement battles, the proposal building. Notably, she organised her time in the most efficient manner.
You can probably guess what we found with the second salesperson.
His behaviour was almost the opposite. He seemed to be ‘going through the motions’ and just followed the playbook and read the scripts, but he never probed deeply.
He didn’t build trust; he was just another seller.
When he hit a roadblock, he gravitated toward excuses. “They’re ghosting me,” he’d say about an existing customer, and he never explored how to change that dynamic; he just gave up.
He took the easy road and just kept sending emails - “Did you get my last email to meet?”
He would write. He stuck to the easy parts of the job, like doing demos, and avoiding the gritty work required to get complex deals across the line.
Spot the difference
What can we learn from these two very different people and their approaches to successful selling? We know it wasn’t the territory, the product, training, or tools. It was simply the mindset and behaviour each brought to the job.
If we want to replicate the success of the first salesperson, we have to stop assuming that experience, work history and past achievements equal competence in the field.
We need to focus on three specific areas:
1. Hire for the mindset, not just track record.
Most of the time, we recruit based on past employers and the successes listed on a resume, such as meeting budget targets. We have no way of knowing whether that past success was due to skill or just luck, like a hot territory.
We rarely assess and analyse what matters, such as curiosity, accountability, and discipline. If we don’t assess these during an interview, we risk hiring people who are satisfied with “good enough.”
2. Build behaviour into the training.
By focusing your training on a sales methodology will produce limited, unsustainable results. However, if you train staff on how to be curious and customer-focused within that methodology, it changes everything.
If we introduce accountability and discipline in how they use the tools, they will get more value from them.
3. Leaders must model it.
Why should we expect our sales staff to demonstrate accountability if their leaders don’t? If managers don’t model curiosity, customer-centricity, and caring every day, their people never will.
The bottom line
Take some time to look at your store’s sales staff. Perhaps you have a few people right now who look great on paper but are inconsistent.
We often try to ‘fix’ these staff by giving them more product training or tightening their KPIs; however, I have found that all too often their poor performance isn’t usually a lack of skill; it’s a lack of will. It’s mindset.
The staff behind your counter might have been given the best tools in the world, and your procedures are great, but you cannot automate curiosity or script accountability.Those have to be hired for, coached, and modelled. Everything else is just noise.
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