Q: Dear SaaStr: What Do The Top 1% of Sales Reps Do … That The Other 99% Don’t?
I have a pretty good sense what the Top 10% do, though I’m not 100% sure about the top 1%. On the surface, they seem to be doing the same things the rest of the Top 10% do. If you don’t dig in, it can be hard to tell why the Top 1% perform the rest of the top decile.
Except for one factor — one key difference between the Top 10% and the Top 1% is the very top are extremely efficient with their time.
They’re already very, very good. They know exactly what they are doing going into every deal, usually even before they even do the demo or pick up the phone. If they closed Aetna selling to the VP of X — they already know exactly how to sell the same exact same business process to the exact same VP at Cigna.
And with only so many hours in the week, they know exactly how much time to spend on each prospect to absolutely maximize the revenue per lead.
And because they are so good at presenting… they don’t seem to quite sweat as much as the guy right below them, who’s still making a ton of money, but not quite as efficient in getting there.
The mediocre ones tell you prospects “waste their time.” That’s exactly backward. As the 1%ers will tell you that.
