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