Saga of the Top 1%
Sales Team 1 was founded by Paul Mush in 1987. Since then he has built 145 sales teams with over 20,000 commission reps. Paul started in sales as a commission-only rep calling on automotive service business selling diagnostic and technical information systems. He quickly discovered that as a profession, sales was smoke and mirrors where anybody could declare themselves a guru with nothing more than hot air to back it up. The training was more motivational sloganeering than useful methodology.
Having a scientific background, Paul took the situation as a challenge. He did exhaustive systematic study of all published information and found it for the most part useless and irrelevant. It seems that each so-called author plagiarized the hearsay and mythology of other writers, at best adding another catchy phrase or two to the dung pile of sales literature.
Paul applied what he learned about the scientific method. He created a hypothesis for each aspect of the sales process. A hypothesis is an educated guess, a model of reality. A sales process was drafted based on the best thinking in sales so far combined with what he knew worked for him personally. Paul systematically tested each in the only laboratory where such experimentation can provide meaningful results, the free-enterprise marketplace of sellers and buyers acting in their own self-interests.
He knew he needed a statistically valid sample size before a judgment could be made, so he rigorously and consistently used each method many times with real products, real prospects, trying to get real money. This was no mere theoretical MBA class. This was life and making a living (or not).
Patterns quickly emerged and became more clear over time. Paul discovered what worked and what did not. When a sale happened the process worked. When he got objections and rejection the process did not work. Causation and correlation needed to be verified in a systematic way.
Paul created the Zero-Defect concept for sales whereby the ultimate 100% close ratio goal was embraced as possible since eventually only effective techniques remain as non-effective techniques are eliminated one-by-one. This concept was extended to include the systematic writing of voice mails, opening statements, presentations and so on, word-by-word, testing each in the crucible of the marketplace.
This evolved into the psychologically engineered™ sales process where the perceived meaning and thus implication of the whole, component elements, sentences, phrases, words, inflection of delivery, emotional content and spin, and so on is the basis. This was the breakthrough Paul had sought. It is subtle and somewhat esoteric. On the one hand, it is more intuitive than rational which upsets analytical left-brain types. On the other, it is logical and rational which causes the right-brain focused poets eyes to glaze over. We live in a world where all modes of thought, consciousness, and being coexist. This is another indicator of the worth of the model since it includes and embraces every possible mode and seeks to create more.
Now Paul needed to determine and ensure repeatability. Variables must be minimized. The key one being the rep. Was it the process or the rep that led to failure or success? By this time Paul was training professionally so had another laboratory to work in, the classroom. Paul was intelligent and talented. Was that a requirement or merely an advantage to get the same positive results?
Paul hired and trained hundreds of reps. If a rep would unlearn accumulated subconscious bad habits and learn the psychologically engineered™ sales processes Paul developed, and work systematically and diligently, that rep would quickly rise to the top. If not, the rep languished in mediocrity or worse, usually quitting dejected and broke.
No more would reps have to blindly follow what others think works. They could discover quickly first hand and verify what actually does work. Not in general terms, but for themselves specifically and for the exact product they were presently selling.
Paul continued evolving and refining his psychologically engineered™ sales processes. He wanted to make it easier to learn and master by not just the top reps, but for any serious reasonably competent rep. He learned what was essential and what could be triaged out. The more he developed his process, the easier it was for others to learn and master and the faster they rose to the top. It not only worked, it worked every single time.
Paul took on more and more clients and built lots of teams in a wide variety of industries and markets. He hired and trained many thousands of reps. He discovered that the core of the process was applicable to any product from the most simple to the most complex and technical. He noted that it didn’t matter if the reps were old or young, experienced or novices, genius or average intelligence. Amazingly, it didn’t matter if they were extroverted or introverted, optimistic or pessimistic, or any of a multitude of ying-yang personality characteristics.
Above all, it didn’t matter if they had a positive attitude, a negative attitude, or no attitude at all. This was sacrilegious. It was heresy. It was true.
Thus the Top 1% sales process was created and perfected. It is firmly based on the psychologically engineered™ sales process, which in turn is based on systematic approaches that celebrate the emotional and intuitive while preserving the value of rational thought. It is inherently “open-source” with the “source-code” freely available to all and participants encouraged to share and collaborate in a community of sales professionals for the benefit of all.
It stands alone today as the fastest most reliable way to that exalted top 1% realm of sales success. It works for any reasonably intelligent rep willing to pay the price to learn and master. It is deceptively simple. Many reps don’t try because it looks too simple. It is simple, but so is a guitar (6 strings and some frets along a neck), writing (just 26 letters in the alphabet), and raising kids (how hard can it be…. I was that age once).
Paul has published it all in an ebook and it is availble online as part of the 10 Hour Sales membership program. Comments come in daily from reps across the country who found the ebook and relate how it helped them reach new heights of success in sales. They tell heartwarming real-life stories of hardship and failure transformed into happiness, supporting their families, and enjoying life.