Sales Superstar Confidential

As a result of hard work, superstars are so prepared that they’re very confident in the home when it comes to a close. “How do you get confidence? You get confidence by being good, and you get good by being prepared. You get prepared by putting in the time, effort and energy, and school is never out,” Grosso says.

Corporate Culture

Another requirement for good salespeople is that they work within the corporate culture and belong to the team, Grosso advises. He cites a basketball team with several Hall of Famers on its roster but which still couldn’t win against a team that had less accomplished members but who worked effectively as a team. “If you have a superstar that doesn’t fit your corporate structure, he can destroy what’s going on within the company,” Grosso warns.

Grosso’s advice for a company that doesn’t have an effective system is to not be afraid to go outside of the organization to seek help from experts. The average business person is a salesperson or installer who had an “entrepreneurial seizure,” in the words of Michael Gerber (The E-Myth). “They truly don’t know how to run a business so they should go outside and start with seminars and also network, network, network,” Grosso advises.

In addition, when it comes to great salespeople, management has to constantly raise the bar. People will sell in direct proportion to how inspired they are and how much they believe, Grosso contends.

Grosso recalls the businesses that made money in what he calls the Disneyland Days of roughly 2004-2006. “They really made money,” he says, “because it was so easy. It was happening not because of them but in spite of them. Then business got tough and they were clueless about what to do.”

A lot of them are gone today, Grosso comments. “The strong survive and adapt. You have to constantly keep adapting. Look at your numbers; look at what’s happening in the marketplace. There are guys just now getting out of big-ticket ‘want’ items. It took them two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses to figure out somebody moved their cheese.”