Copying the Best Sales Person Almost Never Works

In every sales organization I’ve joined, I’ve witnessed the same strategy for training new sales people. It looks something like this: “Go find the top performer, shadow all their sales meeting (or now days - watch all their demos on Gong), copy everything they do, and thats all there is to you being a future to performer.” Maybe they even bring their top performers to lead team trainings or kickoff sales retreats. 

It’s a flawed strategy, here’s why:

Imagine if I told you can be just as good as Steph Curry if all you had to do was watch over and over again on how he shoots a jumper.

Or you could be a surgeon, just watch her perform surgery over and over again. 

You get the idea. 

There’s a reason why athletes, doctors, top sales people, and other professionals are paid extremely well: The demand for their services greatly exceeds supply. If all I needed to do to be a successful surgeon is just watch a doctor perform heart surgery over and over again, everyone would be a doctor. And shortly thereafter, they all would make as much as teachers. Professionals, especially well paid ones, have the combination of attitude, knowledge, and moods that non-professionals simply don’t have. Moreover, their attitude, knowledge, and moods are manifested in their body. Steph can shoot jumpers, surgeons have manual dexterity; and salespeople use their body language, tonality and speech. 

Most salespeople lack the knowledge to be top performers. And it’s not their fault - nobody actually studies or trains to be a salesperson they way an athlete or a doctor would. A sales people’s education probably consists of reading some books or blogs, and maybe taking a training seminar. After interviewing 100’s of salespeople, their notion of sales looks something like this: be nice and friendly, communicate clearly, try to ask good questions, and know the product and be able to nail its features and benefits. And what this usually this notion adds up to is a sales person somewhere between decent and good. 

Many sales leaders believe they can take this decent to good sales person, have them watch their top performers, and thats all thats needed to turn them into their next top performer. In my experience, that hardly ever happens. 

Instead, sales leaders should focus on two things:

1). Hire sales people who invest in building their sales knowledge. I’m not talking about the person who reads books or listens to podcasts. I’m talking about the type of person who realizes that the gap between where they are and where they want to go - is a knowledge gap. They have specific goals and a plan on how they are going to increase this knowledge every day. 

2). Create a feedback system for your sales people. How do professionals get better: feedback and coaching. This is where you should utilize your top performers. If I walked up to Steph Curry and shared with him my insight on how he can improve his jump shot, he’d very politely thank me while instantly forgetting what I told him. People at the top of their profession listen and seek out other top professionals for coaching and feedback. If you want your new sales people to get better, don’t have them copy the top performers, empower your top performers to give consistent feedback and coaching to your new people.

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, and expecting different results. For 20 years, the first thing I hear is “go watch how our Top Performer does a demo and do it her way.” Rarely does it work. If it were that easy, I’d be playing NBA Basketball.