Have you ever tried to be really good at anything? A sport? A hobby? Your work? Running a company? Leading a sales force? Selling?
Being great is difficult but becoming great is significantly more difficult. It involves an awful lot of hard work, practice, failure, discouragement, hope, improvement and eventually, increasing levels of achievement and success.
In fact, it’s so difficult, that I don’t believe very many care about excellence. It’s one thing to be an excellent typer or speller or writer (which I am not). But it’s an entirely different challenge altogether to become a master at something, and sales excellence, whether at the sales or sales leadership level, requires mastery.
My three most important articles of 2014 were recently posted on my Blog,Understanding the Sales Force.
In one article I wrote about the secret I uncovered about companies that have achieved sales excellence with Social Selling.
In the other article I wrote about the companies that have shortened their sales cycles, improved their win rates and increased their revenue. I shared 3 things that they are doing differently to achieve sales excellence and also introduced our brand new White Paper, The Modern Science Behind Sales Force Excellence.
Why am I writing this and how does it tie into the title of this article?
Those two articles – both about Sales Excellence – were the least viewed articles of the year! Very few people care about achieving excellence in sales.
It’s like I said at the beginning of this article. Why work hard to achieve excellence when you can hardly work and achieve mediocrity? The numbers prove it. 74% of all salespeople suck. Who would want to tinker with such a successful formula? Sucky salespeople can earn anywhere from $65,000 to as much as $175,000. Great salespeople can earn anywhere from $75,000 to $300,000. Most people are comfortable with this broken model.
Who else is ready to blow up the whole darn thing and start over?