Articles ⇒
Are You Worth Another $100,000 per Year?
Equation Research recently published data indicating that the difference in income between Top Salespeople and Low Performing Salespeople is nearly $100,000 a year! Where do you fit in?
| Average Total Compensation of Salespeople* | |
| High Level Performers | $155,055 |
| Mid-Level Performers | $93,499 |
| Low Level Performers | $64,990 |
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*Source: Equation Research: Sales & Marketing Management Magazine, May 2005 |
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About 10% of all salespeople are in the High Level Performers category. However, within that ranking, the Top 1% earn anywhere from 5 to 15 times more than the average of that group.
What accounts for these substantial differences in performance and earning power? What does it take to earn that kind of money?
It's not working longer and harder, nor “working smarter.” No one can work 5 times longer and harder than someone who is near the top of the profession, and no one is several times smarter. The Top 1 Percent are different from the rest.
The Top 1% utilize a different sales process that is radically different from the sales techniques that the other 99% use. The way they do business doesn't even resemble what most people think of as “Selling.”
The methods of the Top 1% are not a closely guarded “secret.” Our book, “High Probability Selling,” describes how the Top 1% do business. It's been on the market since 1993, and 100,000 copies have been sold, presumably to salespeople and sales managers.
Why haven't most sales pros “gotten it” yet?
David Wolfe, an expert marketing consultant in Reston, VA, offers this explanation: "Our brains evolved to resist change, in the interest of giving us stabilized connections to the external world. To do this, we simply block out information that conflicts with past experiences and beliefs. Psychologists call this behavior “denial.”
Paraphrasing more of David Wolfe's writing: Most intelligent salespeople recognize the conflict between their beliefs and the new sales realities. They resolve these conflicts with confabulations about why they must stick with the “tried and true.” The instinctive, subconscious part of their brains tell them that they have survived by utilizing the old methods - and survival is the most powerful human instinct.
Philadelphia psychotherapist Dr. Wayne Diamond, who works with a large number of salespeople, has observed this resistance to changing sales beliefs in his practice. He describes it as “fear-based denial.” Dr. Diamond notes that most salespeople are in such deep denial that they even deny that they experience any fear. They use words like “uncomfortable,” “uneasy,” “awkward,” and “anxious,” which are all euphemisms for fear.
The cost of all this avoidance, fear, and denial among salespeople is well over a $100,000 a year in lost income.
Can you find the courage to face and overcome your fears? If you don't overcome your aversion to change, how are you going to improve your earning power? What will it take? If you're not ready now, will you ever be ready?