What’s the Difference between SALES and SELLING?
For me? Simple. SALES is a common word that indicates “WHAT HAPPENED.” Meaning, PAST tense or history. As in, “How many SALES did you make last month?”
SELLING has always been what we strive for because as in many other “I-N-G” words it means it’s happening NOW and it’s ONGOING. I’ve written about it A LOT in my books and columns. In SELLING NOW and THE SELLING IDEA…
The SELLING IDEA is based on a simple premise—
Whenever there exists MANY WAYS to do a THING, there must then also exist MANY WAYS TO FAIL at that thing!
Anyone in or around SELLING has heard of the 80/20 RULE.
When I was a Director of Sales for 10 years, and now a couple of decades as a SELLING coach/consultant with a variety of selling organizations we try and establish early on some FUNDAMENTALS that we can build on to create a greater SELLING SUCCESS STORY.
I’m often asked, “What do you think?” or “How do you think this will work?”
The EVIDENCE over all those years and literally thousands of salespeople show up this way…
20% are WINNERS
20% are NON-WINNERS (that’s how we say it)
60% are UNDER-PERFORMERS (what we call “at-leasters” as in, “at least I did better than Bob…”)
WINNERS can under-achieve and UNDER-ACHIEVERS can become WINNERS, but there absolutely must be a FOCUS and COMMITMENT on improving the individuals and the results.
When I presented a plan to an executive team in Texas after they had me fly down to meet with them on growing their SELLING RESULTS they asked me how I thought it would go and I told them, “YES…I CAN tell you with some degree of certainty how it will go, it’s called THE LAW OF THIRDS!”
Meaning, ONE THIRD will be the same complaining NON-WINNERS that they’ve always been, “I can’t believe they’re bringing in this guy, what does he know about what we do!” (This is the group Jim Collins talks about in his book GOOD to GREAT when he says “Get the WRONG PEOPLE off the bus!”)
ONE THIRD will be unaffected. Not engaged, just looking around and continuing to do what they’ve always done. Under-perform. And as we always say “UNDERPERFORMANCE requires EXPLANATION!” Top Performance needs NO EXPLANATION.
Then there’s the ONE THIRD that gets EXCITED about what’s NEW. They run at what you’re doing and believe it can help them become BETTER!
When that happens and that ONE THIRD begins to see greater SELLING RESULTS it puts a kind of PEER PRESSURE on the rest of the group to also improve. Some will leave and some will make the decision to engage and get better.
The question then becomes “what would happen for you if suddenly ONE THIRD of your team engaged in BECOMING WINNERS and delivering GREATER RESULTS?
WINNERS not only work hard on SELLING, on their job, they work hard on IMPROVING themselves. I’ve written and talked about it for many years. SELLING is not a NUMBERS game, it’s an IMPROVING game. It’s about getting BETTER and having that translate to BETTER RESULTS for teams and individuals.
Many/Most organizations are focused on SALES, not SELLING or ongoing improvement. They just look at the sales scorecards at the end of the month and see what happened. Good or bad.
Great things happen when we put the FOCUS on SELLING and IMPROVING. So here’s to a week of SELLING, WINNING, and CREATING…Greater RESULTS!
Have a great week,
Michael
EDITORS NOTE:
Michael York is an accomplished AUTHOR and SPEAKER...as well as the Co-Founder and Host of CETV.
In 2022 He was named “Most Unique Leadership Coach” by Corporate Vision International, and in 2023 was awarded the “Transformation Coach of the Year” by Wealth and Finance magazine.
An award-winning CONSULTANT and COACH retained by ORGANIZATIONS for his contribution to the improvement of HUMAN POTENTIAL, PERSONALLY as well as PROFESSIONALLY.
He is the RADICAL IMPROVEMENT CATALYST behind major advancements with his clients over two decades and the EVIDENCE of his EXPERTISE is confirmed by empirical RESULTS, some of which can be seen at www.MichaelYork.com