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Warren Wechsler's
Top Story

What Does It Take to Be a Selling Superstar?

Warren Wechsler, bestselling author and national sales and motivational speaker, provides many valuable resources free of charge to sales trainers and sales managers. Some restrictions apply to the use and distribution of this information. For more valuable materials, visit Warren's web site www.totalselling.com. All materials and content © Warren Wechsler, 2001 – All rights reserved.

Today's top story is what does it take to be a selling superstar? I've given this a lot of thought, and I've been looking through things I've talked about in the past. I was saying, "Well, gee whiz, maybe I've already talked about this. Maybe there's nothing new for me to say on this subject." And you know what? I was wrong. I do have something new to say on this topic.

What I've tried to do - and again I'm leveraging the fact that many of you are long-time listeners…I am one of these people that has to have a system for everything. Yes, I've got The Six Steps to Excellence in Selling, not five, not eleven, not three, but six. And I've talked before about the four steps to effective appointment setting, or the two rules in asking for the order, or the three best types of prospects. I've got everything down to numbers. I try and codify; I try and put into a system, into a process everything I possibly can so it's measurable and repeatable.

As I got to thinking about this topic, what makes a champion in sales, it occurred to me that I need to do the same thing. In my view there are three absolute, non-negotiable, paramount principles that we must follow in order to be champions in selling. They are preparation, process, and practice. Yes, I'm a big fan of alliteration. It just happened to come out that way. But if you think about the three P's then you'll have an understanding of what this topic is, what this week's top story is.

In order to be a champion in sales, we have to understand and use the three P's. We have to be prepared. We have to have a sales process. And we have to practice our craft.

Let's look at the first idea. Have a plan. That's what preparation's all about. When you look at Tiger Woods, if you looked at today's USA Today, the sports section, they had a number of articles about Tiger Woods. One of the things that struck me is that when Tiger Woods was a very young man, in his room was a plaque on his wall, and on the plaque listed all the achievements of Jack Nicholson. Anybody who follows golf knows that Jack Nicholson has the nickname "the golden bear". He, for the last twenty-five years, has been absolutely the number-one name in golf. He's got more major championships than anybody has. I think it's eighteen. He's just the best of the best. Tiger Woods had on his wall a plaque that showed all the different things that Jack Nicholson had done: how many amateur titles he had won, how old he was when he won his first major, how old he was when he won his career grand slam, how many majors, how many tournaments, how many earnings, all this stuff. He had it on his wall. Now many young men his age would have had different things on their wall. We won't get into that, will we, Steve?

The fact is he knew what he wanted to do from a very young age. He had a plan. So the first thing we have to consider in order to be sales champions is that we have to know what we want. We have to do what Steven Cubby says. Begin with the end in mind. Have a plan. Know where you're going. It's like having a business plan for your sales career. It's called a strategic sales plan.

What's in your strategic sales plan? You have to understand how much business did you generate from your current clients last year. How much business are you expecting this year? What type of prospects are you going to go after this year? Who are your key accounts? Who are your key targets? What type of revenue can you expect by geography, by industry, by type of product and service? What type of margins are you looking to attain in your business? What are your annual goals? How are you going to break it down into quarterly targets? What's your monthly plan? What do you have to do every day in order to implement this plan to insure your success?

If you're Lance Armstrong, do you wake up one day and say, "Oh, I think I'd like to ride in the Tour de France. What's that date in July? I'll just show up at the starting line on July 2 of 1997." - or whatever was the first year he rode in the tour. Well, obviously it's not like that at all. You have to, he has to, we all have to prepare. That's why the number one thing and the first attribute of being a champion salesperson is all about preparation. Where do you want to go? How are you going to get there? What are your goals?

I'll tell you right now, I'm looking to get back to the form I had in 1991. Now this was ten years ago. In 1991 I absolutely looked like and ran like an elite marathon runner. I was thirty-eight then; I'm forty-eight now. I weighed 127 pounds. My body fat was under 10%. I was up to between seventy and ninety miles a week. I had everything planned out by the month, by the day, by the week, by the year. And I had in 1991 eleven consecutive races where I set a PR. This was at distances from 5K, where I went under seventeen minutes at the age of thirty-eight, to the marathon distance where I ran a 2:53, that's two hours and fifty-three minutes for the marathon distance. I was 208th out of 6,500 runners at the age of thirty-eight.

As I look back, as I reflect on why I was that good, it came down to P, preparation. And you know what? With my coach here locally in town, I'm starting to get back to that same type of mindset right now. We'll see where it takes me. We'll see if I can get back to that same level of fitness ten years later.

That's the first P. The second P stands for process. Process means that we have a system in place by which we run our business. As I've talked about on this show before - and if you're a first time listener I'll say it again - many people are trained in sales in what I call the go-get-em model. Go get 'em, Warren. Go get 'em, Steve. Go get 'em, Jay. You're going to be great. We know you're going to be good. Go get 'em. Well, go get 'em doesn't work. You have to have a process. You have to have an understanding of how you're going to implement the system that you prepare for yourself.

Let's look at some of the things we've talked about today. Let's look at golf. The process of golf is driving. You have to get the ball off the tee. Then you're onto the fairway. You have to have short game to understand how to get the ball down the fairway. And the short game, putting. So those are the three ideas involved in golf. Of course there are sand wedges and blasting out of traps and getting out of water and all that. But the fundamentals are driving, short game, and putting.

What about cycling? The process in cycling is that you've got to put time in on the hills. You have to do speed work. You have to put in long distance training.

How about running? How about my specialty? The process is long slow distance as a base, hill work to build your stamina and strength, and speed work to enhance your leg turnover so you can run fast for a long amount of time.

OK, what about selling? Is there a process in selling? Should we just wing it? Should we go by the seat of our pants? Should we wait for the phone to ring? Of course not. In order to be successful in a sales process, you have to have one. My process is six steps. Find the prospect. Who are your best prospects? Who are the decision-makers? Who are the right people to talk to in those accounts? How many appointments do you have this week? How are you identifying their needs? Are you asking questions and listening? What's your presentation? How do you present your company? What type of proposal format do you use? And finally, how do you go about asking for commitments? That's a six-step model that I've been following ever since I created it back in the late 1970's, early 1980's.

The point is in order to be a champion in sales you have to have a process. It can be simple. I gave a speech in Jacksonville, Florida about four years ago, and a guy in the back of the room stood up and said, "I have a process." And I said, "Yes, sir. What's your process?" He said, "Find a need and fill it." He had a two-step process; it worked for him.

All right, the first P is preparation; the second P is process. The third P is practice. Practice, practice, practice. You can sit around all day long and prepare. You can have an identifiable, repeatable, measurable process, but like everything in sport or business or life, you've got to get out there and practice it. Tiger Woods is in a slump. He's the greatest golfer ever to play the game. He hasn't won a tournament in his last four or five. [Gasping sound] Horrors! There are people that play the tour for thirty years and never win. He hasn't won in four tournaments. Tiger's in a slump. What did Tiger do? He went back to the fundamentals. He had swing coach analyze his swing. He went to the driving range and he hit hour after hour, bucket after bucket of balls.

What about Lance Armstrong, the cycling analogy? People say, "Lance, how come you're so good at what you do?" There's a commercial, I think it's for one of the shoe manufacturers or a sports drink or whatever. I won't mention them by name because I guess you're not allowed to do that on the air. He looks right in the camera and he says, "My butt's on my bike six hours a day." That's his edge. He trains; he practices.

Marathon runners - seventy, eighty, ninety, hundred mile weeks. What about selling? What's the practice? What's the practical application of selling? It's called taking action, making the calls, spending the time as it will in the saddle, keeping track, keeping score, following up, making sure you're doing the things that you know are going to make you successful.

As Isaac Stern, the great violinist once said when he was asked, "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?" Do you know what the answer was? "Practice, practice, practice." Here he was in his nineties. He practiced up to six hours a day. And when someone said, "You're a maestro. You're a virtuoso. People come from all over the world to hear you play. Why in the world do you have to practice?" With a twinkle in his eye, he said, "You know, I think I'm getting better." Practice is what it's all about.

There you have it, folks, in my view, in my humble opinion. You know I'm not humble if you've heard my show before. In order to be a champion in selling, we have to master the three P's: preparation, process, and practice.

This was a partial transcript from Warren Wechsler's weekly radio show. Warren Wechsler, bestselling author and national sales and motivational speaker, provides many valuable resources free of charge to sales trainers and sales managers. Visit Warren's web site www.totalselling.com Also, listen to Warren's weekly radio broadcast Wednesday's at 4:05 - 5:00 pm Central time, on KMCD-AM 1570AM. Shows are broadcast live on the internet at http://www.warpradio.com/asx/KMCD-AM.asx