Salespeople today have one of the most difficult jobs in the world. It’s one of the toughest jobs, and the only thing we know about it, it’s getting tougher every year. The competition is fiercer, the number of selections that is available to our customers is greater, the price wars continue and continue. We have competition locally, statewide, nationally, globally, and no matter what we learned, it becomes obsolete at a very rapid rate. If you read the financial pages, all you read about is increase sales.

Every single number on the financial pages, whether it’s a stock price, which of course is a bid and ask price, but whether it’s – what is happening in the computer industry or the automotive industry or the telecommunications industry, it’s all increase increase sales, increase increase sales, increase increase sales, which are made by people like yourselves. And you go out and you keep doing this job over and over again. You have not only one of the toughest jobs, but one of the most important jobs. And the courage that you have, the guts that you have, the intestinal fortitude that you have is what our entire economy depends upon. And I personally am grateful for your efforts, as most Americans are and the others should be.

That being said, I started off my career in increase increase sales very inauspiciously. I started off as a young man. I was broke. I had no education. I had no skills. I couldn’t do anything, so I got into straight commission increase sales, knocking on doors, and trying to make increase sales during the day, and getting my commissions paid at the end of the day. Now, there are harder ways to make a living than cold calling and selling in 90 and 100-degree heat when you have no money in your pocket and you have holes in your shoes. But I don’t know what they are right now. I got into this and I spun my wheels and I spun my wheels for months, and I just barely, one grab at a time, was able to keep myself in enough money and enough food. Now I never missed a meal, I’m happy to say, but I did postpone a few of them during my increase sales careers, indefinitely. I lived in a guesthouse that cost five dollars a night. And I made eight dollars for each sale. And I had to make a sale each day in order to get paid, so I could get back to my guesthouse by five o’clock, so I had a place to sleep that night. I was one sale away from homelessness, day after day, week after week, month after month.

And then a most remarkable thing happened to me. I began to stand back and look at increase sales and ask the question, why is it that some increase salespeople are doing better than others? Why is it that they’re selling more? I looked around me at friends of mine, who were selling the same product out of the same office to the same people, and they had homes and cars and apartments, and they had pockets full of money and credit cards, and they went to nice restaurants, and they flew around in jets, and I was barely making do.

So that led me on to a lifelong study of what I call the psychology of selling. And then of course the psychology of selling leads to the practice of selling. As soon as I started that study, and I began improving, my increase sales results began to improve. And eventually I went to the top of my increase sales force. Eventually the people who were ahead of me were working for me. Eventually I had several countries under my control. You know, if you’re a good increase salesperson they make you a increase sales manager. And then I began to recruit and train other people. I began to study and read and teach people things that I was learning from training, and every increase sales force I ever joined, I went to the top in because of the things that I learned.

And I want to start off with what I think is one of the most important set of concepts I ever learned. It’s two concepts. The first concept is what is called the Winning Edge concept. Now, the Winning Edge concept has been around for many years. It’s one of the great breakthrough concepts of the 20th century. It’s so important, that if you can understand it – and many of us are not conceptual, we don’t get abstract concepts – but if you can understand it, it will change your life. It says this – it says that: “Small differences in ability in certain areas can translate into large differences in results in those areas.” What it says is that people who are successful, are successful on the margins. They’re just a little tiny bit better in the critical areas that make a difference. People who are unsuccessful are just a little tiny bit worse in those areas.

It says this, if a horse runs in a horse race and wins by a nose, it wins 10 times the prize money of a horse that comes in second by a nose. But does it mean that the horse is ten times faster because it has won by a nose? No, it means it’s only a nose faster. It’s not twice as fast. It’s not ten percent faster, it’s just a nose faster, and that translates into ten times the prize money.

The point is this – is that when you get a sale and you win a sale over your competition, does it mean that your competitor’s product is twice as good as yours, or twice as cheap? Or does it mean that your competitor’s increase salesperson is twice as competent as you are, and so on? No. All that matters, it’s a nose better. Sometimes your prospects will buy products that are not as good as yours and not as well priced because of a marginal difference. We know that a horse can come in, in the money, it can win, place, or show and it can still win, but increase salespeople, ourselves, are in a winner take all business.

Do you ever get called over and asked if you would like to get – come over and get honorary mention for having made such a good presentation? We decided to buy from your competition, but we’d like to give you a little check just for having come by and done such a good job? No, we don’t get second prize. We are in winner take all. We either get the sale or lose the sale. We are 100% business. And sometimes the difference is only – according to the studies, and this has been studied extensively – it’s about three percent. It’s about three percent. What it means is that the top people are excellent in the critical success areas, the winning edge areas. They’re about three percent better, and they maintain that three percent edge over time, and it translates into enormous differences in results.

Now let me ask you a question. In our increase sales audiences we have people who make $25,000 a year. We also have people in the same audience, selling the same product to the same people at the same price who make $250,000 a year. There’s a difference of ten times in the amount they’re selling, the amount they’re making. So here’s my question, is this possible? And the answer is, of course it’s possible because we see it all the time. But here’s the second question. Is it possible for somebody to be ten times as much as somebody else? Can this person who is making ten times as much, be working ten times the number of hours? No. Can they have ten times the years of education? Do they read ten times the books? Do they make ten times the number of the calls? Do they spend ten times the amount calling on people and so on? Answer is no. It’s not possible to be ten times anything. It’s not hardly possible to be double anything.

The point is this, is that this person is sometimes doing just small things right, consistently over and over again, and it translates into enormous differences. You find people – by the way, it’s not experience because you find people who have limited experience who are doing far better than people with extensive experience. What we have is small marginal differences translating into enormous differences and results. Now here’s the key point. Please, it’s terribly important. Is the person who’s making $250,000, was once making $25,000, and he or she began to do certain things in a certain way.

Everybody started at the bottom. Everybody started at the bottom making the bottom amount. Everybody starts at the back of the line. The only question is, how soon do you get from the back of the line to the front of the line? And many people think, well I just – I’m sure happy I’m in line. I’m sure happy to be here in line. It sure is nice to be in line. Look at those people up there. They must be blessed from God. They must have descended from heaven. Somehow they must have had a magic genie or something that gave them special gifts. No. What they did is they decided – and this is critical – they decided to get from the back of the line to the front of the line. And eighty, ninety percent of all the increase sales people I’ve ever met have never made the decision to go to the front of the line. They can’t understand why they’re not at the front of the line. It’s because they haven’t decided to go the front of the line. But I’ll promise you this. If you make the decision to go from the back of the line to the front of the line, you’ll find there’s no obstacles. There’s nothing to stop you. There are no limits on what you can do once you make the decision. This brings us to our second factor.

2. Develop Critical Success Factors

Now the second critical factor, which was a life-changing factor for me, is what is called the Critical Success Factor. The critical success – it’s called the critical success factor idea. And the critical success factor idea comes from some work out of Harvard. It says – and we’ll call it factors – it says that in every single field there are critical success factors. Now, there may be a thousand things you do, but in every field there are seldom more than five to seven factors. We call them CSFs – Critical Success Factors. Seldom more than five to seven that determine all of your success or failure in that area.

Now the word critical means that it is indispensable for life or success. The word critical means that if you have it, you succeed, if you don’t have it, you fail. It’s a critical success factor. There’s things that are peripheral, there’s things that are critical. And for instance, in selling we know that there are seven basic critical success factors. Critical success factor number one is prospecting. If you are a good prospector, you will succeed. If you are not a good prospector, you will fail. Period. Unless you have someone else who will prospect for you and deliver prospects into your hand, and in which case why would they do it for you instead of for themselves – you will fail. Approaching – getting appointments and establishing rapport with clients, is a critical success factor. If you cannot get face-to-face with people and have them like you and trust you and be willing to listen to you, you fail.

Third critical success factor, obviously is – and I’m going to write these down a little bit later anyway – is questioning, problem identification, finding out exactly the situation that the customer has that your product or service is the ideal solution to. The fourth is presenting – which is showing the customer that what you have is the ideal solution to the problem that you or he or she have identified. The fifth is handling objections. All customers are hesitant and careful, cautious about making buying decisions. So the ability to answer their concerns and questions is a critical success factor. Many people can do everything except answer key objections, and they fall apart. And as a result, they don’t sell well.

The sixth critical success factor is asking for the sale – confirming, closing, getting the customer to make a decision. Many people fall apart in this area. Fully ninety percent of increase salespeople by the way, by survey and test, are not psychologically constituted in such a way that they can ask for the order. And the seventh critical success factor, which I’ll come to in just a second, is personal management skills.

The number one reason for failure amongst competent increase salespeople or trained increase salespeople in America today is poor time management. It’s not lack of increase sales skills. It’s poor time management. They see so few people. The average increase salesperson in America sees an average of two people per day. They see an average of two people per day. And I’ve spoken to increase salespeople who say two people per day, is an enormous amount of work for them. They try to see two people a week, and they can’t understand why they can’t pay their bills and their cars are being repossessed. And it’s because their use of their time is dreadful. And we’ll talk about that in other sessions. Well, these critical success factors – identifying your critical success factors – you know if you want to improve anything in life what you do is you break it down into its discrete parts. And once you’ve broken it down into its discrete parts, you then take a look at each one of the parts.

When we work with corporations, for example, when we work with a corporation, the first thing we do is we test all the increase salespeople to find out where they are in the critical success areas of selling. And we will find this, is that your weakest area, your weakest area determines the height of your increase sales. If you are good in six out of the seven areas but you are poor in the seventh, that will determine how much you sell. And we have found, and I’ve had experiences where people have identified one of these critical success factors as being their weakest area, and they’ve gone to work just on that. And by bringing that up, their increase sales have doubled, tripled, and quadrupled in as little as six months.

Because they found that the one weak area – the one thing that’s holding you back is usually a brake, and your foot is slammed on that brake. As soon as you can take your foot off that brake, the whole machine moves forward. So you have to give yourself a grade, continually, of one to ten, and ask yourself how you’re doing in the critical areas, and especially where you’re weak. Now the area where you’re weak will cause you the most stress. The area where you’re weak will be the one where you have the most fear. The area where you’re weak is the activity that you avoid the most, whether it’s prospecting, or telephone skills, or asking for the order, or dealing with objections, or positioning yourself against competition. Whatever it is, or wherever you don’t like or wherever you’re weak is the area that you avoid as much as possible.

3. The Vital Functions Method of Analysis

Well this brings us to the critical success factors, or the vital functions approach to selling. Now, a vital function is another definition for a critical success factor. But what it says is that, in selling, you have vital functions, critical success factors. And vital functions of the body are like heart rate. If you have a heart rate, you’re alive. If you don’t you’re dead. If you have a brain wave activity you’re alive, if you don’t you’re dead. If you have muscle tone, you’re alive, or you’re dead. If you have blood pressure – these are vital functions. They’re all tested and if you have them. Now what we’ve found is this. And this is the most remarkable thing, is that it’s possible to dramatically increase your increase sales with a combination of these two concepts.

The key is to develop the winning edge in your critical success factor areas, or the vital functions of selling. And let me explain what I mean. This is one of the great breakthroughs of modern selling, this little graph. It’s worth its weight in gold. It changed my life. There are, let us say seven. Three, three, four, five, six, seven. All right. This is the graph of selling. And we’ll just do it like this. One, two, three, four, five, seven – and we’ll divide it in three. Now, follow me with this. Let us imagine that these are the seven, and the first one is prospecting. And the second one is approaching and getting the appointments. And the third one is problem identification. And the fourth one is presentation. And the fifth one is dealing with objections. And the sixth one is closing. And the seventh one is personal management.

So now we have a little chart. And let us imagine we do an assessment, like you go to the doctor and the doctor does a complete medical check-up, or a check-up of your blood, and does an analysis. And let’s say we’re doing an assessment, we say that now, today, the beginning of the year, whatever it happens to be, you have a one. This is your baseline. This is your starting point, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, you’re starting off at a one. If you’re a superb time manager, that’s one. If you’re a lousy time manager, it’s one. You have to have a baseline so that you can compare your progress against it. So, the second is one. You’re a one in each one of these areas. You’re a one in approaching, you’re a one in problem identification, you’re a one in presenting, you’re a one in handling objections, one in closing, and one in personal management.

Now, what are your increase sales? Well, your increase sales today are whatever they are, your increase sales are one. So this is what you are. This could be $25,000 a year, could be $250,000 a year, could be two and half million a year. But wherever you are today, that’s where you are. Now let’s say you decide in one year that you are going to increase your income, or your ability in each of these areas by ten percent. You’re going to become – not fantastically better, you’re not going to leap buildings with a single bound, you’re going to become ten percent better in each of the areas that counts. And you’re going to make a plan, as we’ll talk about in a second. And so at the end of the year, twelve months from now, you’re going to be 1.1 in prospecting, just ten percent better. You’re going to be 1.1 in approaching, 1.1 in problem identification, 1.1 in presenting, 1.1 in handling objections, 1.1 in closing, 1.1 in personal management. The question is, what will your increase sales be at the end of twelve months?

Now here’s what we know. If you go to the doctor – vital functions – and the doctor says that you have high blood pressure. I’m going to suggest that you go for a one or two hour walk every single day, and that you cut back on fats and salts and so on, just work on your high blood pressure. What would happen if you went for a one or two walk every day, and you cut back on salts and fats and things like that? How would it affect the rest of your body? And the fact is it would affect your muscle tone and your heart rate and your blood pressure and your brain wave activity and your respiratory rate, every other part of your body would be affected by it, because they are all interrelated. Are you with me on this?

So therefore, when we improve any single part of our lives, or our increase sales careers, we improve every other part simultaneously, because they all affect every other part. So at the end of the year, in one year, where you would be at the end of one year is a multiplied or exponential function, not an arithmetical function. It means it would be 1.1 times 1.1, which is 1.21 times 1.1, which is 1.33. As you can imagine I’m doing this in my head. I’m very, quite, pretty quite brilliant at it. 1.1 which is 1.46, 1.1 which is 1.61, 1.1 which is 1.7, 1.1 which is 1.96, where at the end of a year, you would approximately be 2 in terms of your increase sales.

Now does this work? I’m here to tell you I have worked with thousands of increase sales people all over the world, and every single person who has applied it, has been astonished at how tiny little improvements in the critical areas have led to a doubling of their increase sales, year after year after year. I worked with increase salespeople who in as little as ten years have gone from $10,000 a year to more than a million dollars a year in fiercely competitive industries, where they work on straight commission, simply by using this vital functions, critical success factors, winning edge concept. And that’s all you have to do. Is it possible to double your income? Yes, it’s possible to double your income, but the key is to decide to do it.

So here are the four – here are the four keys to making this work. Key number one is to make a decision. Make a decision that you are going to become excellent in your field. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to me, and how surprising, is that the great majority of people working at every field today, including increase sales, have not yet made the decision, do-or-die, unequivocally, that by-gum I’m going to do whatever it takes to be a great success in my field. They just keep sort of treading water everyday. But as soon as you do, it’s like you’re in a race, and everybody else is strolling and you decide you’re going to run. Instantly, you start to move out ahead of the pack. All the rest are strolling and say hey, don’t run, don’t run. What are you running for? And you say, because I’m not going to stay back there with you no-hopers, I want to get up to the front of the pack. Your job has to be to get into the top ten percent. Now, some people say, I couldn’t do that because I’m so far back. Well, it’s just a matter of time. The top ten percent, it’s just a matter of going from where you are to there and it may take you a week, it may take you a month, may take you a year, but every top increase salesperson, remember, was once a bottom increase salesperson who made a decision to be a top increase salesperson.

And there’s no limits, because selling is merely – really the whole process of selling is interacting and relating professionally and effectively with other people, to help them get things that they want and need to improve their lives and work. It’s not a major thing. We sell from the time we’re an infant calling for our mother to get food or to get our diapers changed, all the way up until we’re adults, and we want to get the bathroom before someone else, we’re all selling. If we want to go to a different restaurant, we sell all the time. Well, so number two is to set a goal. Make a decision, and set a goal of what you want to be in each area. Number three is to define your key result areas, define your KRAs. I’m sorry, your critical success factors, it’s the same thing. Define your critical success factors, and determine what they are, and what work you need to do. And number four is to learn and practice. Learn and practice continually.

4. Define Your Critical Result Area

Well, now how do you define your critical result areas? This is an interesting process, but I would suggest there are several ways. First of all, sit down and do an honest evaluation of yourself. How good do you think you really are in terms of a scale of one to ten, in each of these seven areas? By the way, you can take prospecting and you can divide it into five to seven critical success factors as well. You could take each function. Establishing happy relationships with your family, there’s seven critical functions, five to seven functions as well.

Every single function can be broken down and analyzed in a unit form, and so you can work on it. You break it down like that. So give yourself a scale of one to ten, and then ask your increase sales manager or your boss or your friend, what grade he or she would give you. If you have a good customer or good customers that you work with, take it and say, look I’m trying to improve myself and get better, and I’ve done an analysis of the seven key things that I do, and I wondered if you could give me a grade – how well do you think I did in selling to you. And I think you’re going to get your eyes opened. You’re going to have a real surprise, because you’re going to find that you could probably grade yourself far higher than you really are. You think you’re great at something, other people will think your dreadful. People will have bought from you, because they felt sorry for you. And you’ll think they bought from you because you were good.

But here’s the critical thing, is feedback is the “breakfast of champions.” You can’t get better unless you have an accurate assessment of where your baseline is. In other words if you’re lost, until you can figure out where you are, you can’t get better, you can’t go anywhere else. So therefore ask. Ask your increase sales manager, ask your customers, ask your friends, do an assessment yourself. And one of the best things you can do is you can have your increase sales manager or another increase salesperson come out with you and go on increase sales calls with you, with this scale of seven. And just sit there quietly, don’t interfere, don’t speak, sit in the background and watch and observe and so on, and sort of give you a grade. And after, you can say, well why did I get this grade. And you say well, from what I saw, you could be doing more of this or less of that. And be open to feedback. You can’t get better without feedback and you can’t get feedback, unless the person who you’ve asked for it from, is not afraid you’re going to beat them up or cry or complain or get angry or throw yourself on the floor and have a tantrum.

So therefore, ask for feedback. Invite feedback on a regular basis until you find out where you are. Then you’ll find out that your weakest, critical success factor is setting the height at which you use all your other skills. So what you then want to do is you want to go to work on your weakest area, because that’s the area where you can bring it up the fastest. Now, does this critical success factor idea work? Absolutely. The critical part of it is, the most important part of it is, is that you make a decision you’re going to be in the top ten percent.

Second of all, you set a goal as to what you would look like if you were in the top ten percent. Determine who the top ten percent is. How much would you be selling, how much would you be making? Look at the top people in your field and look at them and say what would I be doing, how much would I be selling, how much would I be making if I was them. And then you define your critical success factors – work these out. Now, yours may be different, but these are pretty constant. Then you say where is my weakest area in here. And then finally, you learn and practice. You listen to tapes, you go to courses, you watch TPN, you listen to audio cassettes in your car, you ask the best people in your field what it is. And if you do that, I can guarantee you, I can promise you that in a very short period of time it’ll be like you have slipped into overdrive, gone into hyperspace, and you’ll start moving ahead more and more rapidly in your career, and everybody’s going to start saying jeez, what happened to him? What happened to her? It’s what you did – is you learned the great secret of success, incremental improvement, day by day, week by week, month by month, until you get to the top.