Mike came into my office one day looking very down. He had been selling for about two months. He was doing significantly above average, so the dejected look on his face surprised me.

I asked him what was wrong and he said, “I don’t get it. With my last prospect I thought I did a perfect sales job. The greeting went really well. My fact finding told me all the important things I wanted.” my product presentation seemed ideal. I overcame his objections very effectively. But when it came to getting a commitment to buy from him, nothing I did was successful.”

“What did I do wrong?” she asked her with a frustrated tone.

I first ask Mike a series of questions about each step of the sales process. So I said, “In my opinion, it looks like you did everything right.”

“Then why didn’t I make the sale?” Mike asked emphatically.

Selling rule 10-80-10

I calmly replied, “I’d say it’s because of the 10-80-10 selling rule.”

“What’s that?” she asked her.

I explained to him that for every 100 customers he expects:

• The top 10% of your customers It will be the easy sale. Most people with no sales experience or sales training will be able to sell them. Some of these customers may be completely pre-sold on your product and just want it now. Take your order and be thankful.
• The average 80% of your customers You can sell if you have the right level of selling skills. This is the customer group that separates sales professionals from amateurs. Fans can sell perhaps 20% or less of this group. Professionals can sell 70% or more of this group. Some of the best professionals sell 100% of this group. The more sales skills you have, the higher percentage of this group will sell.
• The bottom 10% of your customers you’re not going to sell no matter what you say or do. Some common reasons for this could be the following. They just don’t have the ability to buy your product, but want to save face so they can’t admit it. Their personalities mix like oil and water. This is really the wrong product for them. You will sell 0% of this pool.

The secret of success in sales

The secret to success with the “10-80-10 selling rule” lies in two parts.

First, Focus your time and efforts on improving your selling skills like you are doing now by taking this Selling Secrets course. The fact that you are reading Sales Secret #10 says some powerful things about your commitment to developing your selling skills.

Second, don’t focus your time and efforts on getting frustrated because you didn’t sell that bottom 10% of your customers. Joe Girard, the #1 car salesman in the world (according to the Geneses Book of World Records), had a bottom 10% that he couldn’t sell. So my advice is to get over it and move on to more productive sales-producing activities.

Selling is an art, not an exact science. Don’t think you have to be perfect in sales. It’s amazing how rich you can become in sales by being good but not perfect.