Insight Selling: Surprising Research on What Sales Winners Do Differently

Preface

One of the best Henny Youngman one-liners goes something like this: “I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to quit going to those places.”

If you sell, you go to those places every day. We know sellers who have worked on deals worth tens, even hundreds, of millions of dollars, for multiple years—and lost. More than a few of them might have preferred the broken leg than coming in second place. Even when sales are much smaller, it’s no fun to lose.

However, if you don’t go to those places and risk the broken leg, you miss the chance to feel the rush of winning a sale and making customers’ lives better because they made the right decision and bought from you. There’s no question, however, that you win some and you lose some.

The idea, though, is to win as many as you can and win as big as you can. At the same time, although you can never avoid them all, you should direct your energies away from those places that might as well have a sign over the door that reads, “Today’s special: broken legs.”

Just a few weeks ago, we were speaking with the leader of a multibillion-dollar global consulting firm. His top-performing strategic account managers were selling triple what the average strategic account managers sold and growing their accounts at a much faster pace. We asked him, “In your observation, what do you think sets apart the top performers from the rest?”

After a long pause, he said, “They make the magic happen.”

He’s right. They do. It would be fabulous ...