Wouldn’t you like to be able to unlock the salesperson secret code? Ian Mills, interviewed by John Golden, explores the secret of the top five or ten percent of salespeople, and what makes them successful.
This expert sales interview explores elements of the salesperson secret code, including:
- What is the salesperson secret code?
- How was the secret code developed?
- The importance of destination beliefs
What is the salesperson secret code?:
What is it that makes the top five or ten percent of salespeople distinctive? What is it that goes on internally? What beliefs do they hold? What attitudes do they have? What are the values by which they operate? These were questions that Mills explored to try and decipher the salesperson secret code.
A Research-Based Method:
To explore these questions, meticulous research was done. “To get greater gravitas and greater credibility, you need to conduct professional research,” said Mills. To facilitate this research, Mills’ group approached multiple organizations in different geographies in different sectors and asked them to provide salespeople who were top performers and bottom performers for interviews. The interview was conducted for an hour and a half to obtain deep, scientific results. They also analyzed behavioral preferences, attitudes, mindsets, and motivations. In essence, a library was built of millions of data points, creating the ability to undertake a comparative analysis of all the salespeople. “It was that comparative data that enabled us to unpack the difference between successful salespeople and unsuccessful salespeople,” said Mills.
Destination Beliefs:
After completing the research, the findings were distilled into five of the most common destination belief areas. These are things such as communication, influence resilience, control, and fulfillment. “What we found from the research is that every salesperson that we connected with had strengths in each of those areas,” said Mills. Each of those areas had sub-beliefs or motivators. The two of them that contributed to each destination belief is a blend, and what distinguishes the top performers from the rest of the salespeople is that unique blend, and the level of intensity that they hold. Everyone has both, but the top performers had a greater degree of intensity in areas that you might not imagine compared to the rest of the salespeople. This provided some concrete results, enabling them to create a psychometric measure of salespeople.
Fulfillment:
One of the destination beliefs is fulfillment. This is something that most people hold, that they are most fulfilled when they are successful. Two motivations cause this. One motivator is that they are fearful of failure, so they must win to avoid it. The other motivator is the drive to be better than they ever dreamed they could be. “What we found is that the top 5% of salespeople have a much greater level of intensity around the idea of being better than they ever imagined they could be, as opposed to being driven by failure,” said Mills.
For other examples of destination beliefs, and more information on cracking the salesperson secret code, watch the expert sales interview!
About Our Host
John is the Amazon bestselling author of Winning the Battle for Sales: Lessons on Closing Every Deal from the World’s Greatest Military Victories and Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling. A globally acknowledged Sales & Marketing thought leader, speaker, and strategist. He is CSMO at Pipeliner CRM. In his spare time, John is an avid Martial Artist.
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