Sales Success Starts With Getting 1% Better

“I spend 98% of my day sitting in my office and thinking about what I can do to get my team to play just 1% better.” – Pete Carroll (NFL Head Coach, Seattle Seahawks)

I love this quote.

It speaks to the reality of performance improvement. Especially for skill-based professions. Such as sales.

Technology can make you faster, give you a lot more time to sell, and help you train reps faster. But none of it matters if you, as a seller, don’t get 1% better every week.

Sustained improvement comes in small increments. One small step at a time.

If you focus on improving yourself just 1% everyday, in everything you do, then you’ll put yourself on the path to consistently achieving your goals.

You can’t outsource this nitty gritty learning to the fake sales hacks that pollute your inboxes.

If you believe otherwise, you’re fooling yourself.

“Try this sales hack and 5X your close rate!!”

“Use this email template and 3X the number of meetings you’ll set!”

“This script will 7X your conversion rate!”

The only place those short cuts lead is to failure and your next job.

You have to immerse yourself in the experiences with buyers that teach you hard-won lessons; lessons that you can use to cure your weaknesses and bolster your strengths.

And build up your own base of experiences.

Learning from trial and error takes time and patience.

The reward is that you improve. You get smarter. You get better. You get more resilient. Just a little bit everyday.

Think about what Pete Carroll said.

He spends most of his day thinking about how he can help his team play just 1% better.

He’s not trying to 10X his success.

That’s would be crazy.

Because you can’t 10X your sales if you don’t first 2X your sales.

You can’t 2X your sales until first you learn how to improve them by 1%.

Just 1%.

That’s where your success starts.

Follow Andy on LinkedIn.