There are plenty of good salespeople out there. They have good product knowledge. They have good selling skills. And they are likable.

The more competition you have, the more products that can do the same or similar things as yours, the more you need to help and advise your customers, not just sell to them.

Great salespeople are an extremely valuable commodity because they are in such short supply. So, what are the bottom line differences between good salespeople and great?

Great salespeople are continually trying to better themselves. They are always layering on new skills while honing the skills they already have.

Don't just be GOOD. Many of your competitors are good and they're doing everything that they can to be better. Become dissatisfied with good. If you are good – want to be excellent. Then become dissatisfied with excellent. When you are excellent, want to be outstanding. Continue along this path as far as you can.

Great salespeople also have a higher level of ambition than ordinary salespeople. Sure, they want all of the things that money can buy, such as bigger houses bigger cars and more interesting vacations. They also want the non – tangible things that money can buy such as respect, admiration and more freedom.

Another big difference between good and great is that great salespeople have a love for selling.

Now, you and I both know that it's possible to make a great deal of money selling without having any love for it. So, what's the big deal?

The big deal is that at the end of a long career in sales, you have been competing against people who do love it. This means that for your entire career you have been competing against people who are willing to invest more time, and more energy in what they do for a living because they love what they're doing.

Putting more time and energy into any endeavor will almost always lead to greater success. This is as true for selling as it is for playing chess, playing piano or playing baseball.

Imagine working for thirty years competing against people like that. For most of your career, you will feel like the salmon swimming upstream. You will have had a very long, very tiring journey, and, at the end of this long journey you will be completely worn out.

But, most importantly, great salespeople are great because they want to get the most out of themselves. The big money is a byproduct of being great. It's just another way of keeping score.

Winner Take All

Selling is a ‘winner take all' competition. The customer rewards the winner at the expense of everybody else. If you are even just slightly better than your competition, you will earn much, much more money.

Let's say you and I are competing salesmen, going after the same big account. If you are only 2 percent better than I am - follow-up, service, closing ability, etc. – and you make the sale, do you get only 2 percent more commission than I do? Of course not. You get it all. You get 100 percent and I get nothing.

That's why a very small increase in your ability or effectiveness can lead to a very large increase in your income.

Here is the one thing that you can do to give yourself that extra advantage over your competition. This is the one strategy that can catapult you from good to great. By adding this one weapon to your arsenal you can guarantee yourself that you will dramatically increase your income.

The solution is to study and understand how your customer is going to use your goods or services – in depth. The best salespeople see things through their customers' eyes. You must not only profile your customer, you must profile their customer too.

That's it. The fastest way to dramatically increase your sales is to understand and help your customers' customers.

CONCLUSION

Each and every single day, we are being tested as salespeople because clients and prospects vote with the dollars they spend.

Show the buyer how they will make or save money by using your goods or services. It is even better if you can translate that into dollars and cents.

Do these things and I can assure you that you will have all of the great successes that your heart desires.