Fifty-one years ago I began to study selling -- not just because I'm a curious, analytical type, but because I've always had a burning desire to succeed. When I was young I learned that big money can be made in sales and I wanted "my share." Later, I realized that only a tiny percentage of the people who entered the sales profession make it big.

Disappointment

Getting my first college degree, majoring in Industrial Sales, I aced all my sales courses. In my first sales job, I came to realize that what I learned in college didn't work for me. After taking many other sales courses, I learned most corporate and commercial sales trainers couldn't teach selling, either.

So, I set out to find the best salespeople, regardless of industry, to see what they did that other salespeople didn't do. Over the years, I've gone out on sales calls with hundreds of the best salespeople and learned that the top 1% of all salespeople don't sell the way the other 99% sell.

Discovery - Honesty is the "Magic Bullet"

The most surprising thing I discovered is that most of the top salespeople are totally honest in their work. They're honest with their prospects and customers, and they're honest with themselves.

Numbers Don't Lie

You've often heard that "sales is a numbers game." One of the big differences between the top salespeople and the other 99% is they know their numbers. Top salespeople keep records of their sales activities every day, and they analyze their statistics every day.

Don't Lie to Yourself!

The biggest barrier to success for most salespeople is that they don't know their numbers, and they don't want to know. That makes it easy to lie to themselves.

In every company we work with, almost all of the salespeople think and really believe that their closing rates are at least twice as high as they actually are, except for the few top salespeople.

Get Real - With Yourself

Most salespeople don't know how to sell very well, but they think they do. If they knew their numbers, they would have to face the truth about their skills. They would have to change what they're doing.

Change can be very uncomfortable. It's more comfortable to lie to yourself than to change what they you every day. That's why most salespeople fail, and those that survive continue to struggle to make a good living.

False Prospects

Most salespeople spend most of their time with prospects that "have great potential," but seldom buy from them. The average salesperson goes through all of the motions that look like selling, but fails to bring in much business.

Average salespeople seldom truly qualify their prospects. They rarely dis-qualify their prospects, either. If they did, they would need to find new prospects -- but they don't know how prospect effectively, efficiently and enjoyably.

Real Relationships. Real Selling.

We know what top salespeople do when they're selling. We know what works and what doesn't work. We know what top salespeople do to eliminate the rejection most salespeople have to live with and suffer with every day. We know how they eliminate objections so they don't have to "overcome objections." We know how they close dozens of times during each sales visit without any pressure on their prospects or themselves. Top salespeople develop relationships of mutual trust and respect with most of their prospects -- without any phony "rapport building."

The essence of our book, "High Probability Selling," is how the top salespeople actually sell. It's about learning a selling process that makes it highly probable that you'll close the majority of your prosepcts. It's what you can learn how to do in our sales training workshops.

©Jacques Werth, High Probability® Selling - All rights reserved.

Jacques Werth, author of "High Probability Selling," is an internationally respected Sales Trainer and Sales Consultant. HPS graduates are excelling as Top Producers in over 70 industries. Visit http://www.highprobsell.com to read more articles, preview the book, and learn more about High Probability Selling.