Sales seminars are mostly noise
I have been in sales since I was 17 years old. That is thirty solid years, and I have been a top performer at every single job I have ever held. Every one.
In that time I have sat through more sales seminars than I can count. I have taken every personality test they could throw at me. I have been told I am a closer. I have been told I am not a closer. I was once labeled a big I and a little D, whatever that was supposed to mean. Memory seminars, closing seminars, outside sales seminars... You name it, I have been made to sit through it.
And I will say it plainly. Most of it is bullshit. I am not only saying that from my gut. A well known Xerox study found that 87 percent of what gets taught in sales training is gone within 30 days. Companies pour billions into it every year, and most of it evaporates before the next invoice clears.
Here is what I actually believe. There are a handful of real fundamentals, and they matter. But the core of selling cannot be installed in someone in a ballroom. You either have the wiring for it or you do not. And by the way, those personality tests they love so much are weak predictors of who can actually sell. The labels they pinned on me told me almost nothing.
Reading from a script is not selling. Pounding the phone all day is not selling. That is a numbers game, and for most people it barely converts. I have spent my career proving the numbers game is a myth. When researchers studied tens of thousands of real sales calls, the top performers were not the ones talking the most. They listened more than they spoke, closer to 54 percent listening and 46 percent talking, while the weakest reps talked 72 percent of the time.
When I was in outside sales, I was handed quotas for how many doors to knock and how many people to see in a week. I refused. I pushed back at job after job, because I do not need to see sixty people a week to be successful. I need to see about six. Six purpose-driven calls. Walk in prepared, give a presentation that lands, and then do the part almost no one does well, which is listen more than you talk. Find the real pain. Solve it. The research agrees with this too. The biggest drivers of sales performance are not raw activity, they are knowledge and the ability to adapt in the moment, and the people who win deals tend to ask fewer, sharper questions than the people who lose.
The people grinding out endless travel and endless dials are not winning because they are great. They are winning on volume. Work smarter, not harder.
My wife still cannot believe I could have the Real Housewives on in the middle of the day and still be one of the top performers in the entire organization. You want to know how? Because I know how to optimize my time. I can spot a time waster from a mile away. I know how to fire a customer who is costing me and my company more than they are worth, and I know that is good business, not bad. I know how to sell on margin. And I know how to recognize a strong piece of business without dropping my drawers on price to win it.
Here is the part no seminar will ever sell you, because you cannot package it. The single biggest reason I have succeeded for thirty years is that I am honest. Not slick. Not fast talking. Honest. Integrity first, every time. Trust is what actually closes business, and it is the one thing they cannot teach in a freezing ass ballroom with a slide deck and a boxed lunch.
I write about all of this in my book, which is in editing now. One day, when it is finished, I am going to spin this into something that actually teaches people what matters. It will start where everything real in sales starts. Honesty and integrity. Everything else is noise.
