Top Performers Don't Wing It. They Prepare.

There's a myth in sales that the top people are just quicker on their feet. Better instincts. Always know the right thing to say in the moment.

I've managed a lot of reps over twenty years and that isn't what I've watched happen. The good ones do a pile of work before the meeting that nobody ever sees.

Average reps build presentations. Top performers build questions.

Most reps spend their prep time on slides. Polishing the demo, rehearsing the story, making sure the deck flows.

The best ones spend that same time on the customer. What's happening in the business, what the last vendor did to them, which person in the room actually owns the problem, what they're going to push back on and how to answer it without getting defensive.

The second kind walks in with questions. The first walks in with a script.

I want the best conversation in the room. Best presentation is a distant second.

Charisma is overrated

The strongest salespeople I've worked with were generally not the most charismatic ones. A few of them were pretty quiet.

What they had was the industry. They understood what the buyer's week actually looks like, so they weren't guessing. They had the right story ready, because they'd picked which story before they dialed in.

And they'd already answered the hard objection in their own head, so when it came they didn't flinch.

Confidence like that is mostly just work you did last Tuesday.

Preparation isn't only about the call

This shows up everywhere else too, and in the bank channel it shows up hardest.

Those cycles run seven to nine months. Somewhere in there you're going to hit vendor management, a security review, a SOC 2 Type II request, and a buying committee that includes risk, legal and IT. The prepared rep has the security packet ready in week two. Everyone else finds out in month five and loses six weeks.

Same thing with pipeline. Top performers are disciplined about it in a way that looks boring from the outside.

They know their win rate. Mine has generally run around 25%, which means I want 4x coverage on the number and closer to 5x before I sleep well. They know what falls out between stages, so the forecast stops being a feeling and starts being arithmetic.

Pipeline is math. Forecasting is truth. Preparation is what lets you do either one honestly.

Most reps prepare for the next meeting. The good ones are preparing for an outcome that's three meetings out.

The thing my father used to say

My father was a full Colonel in the Air Force. He said the same line to me my whole childhood. If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.

I rolled my eyes at it for about fifteen years.

Now I'm twenty-plus years into sales leadership, I say it to reps, and I hear his voice when I do.

Anyway. If you're coaching a team right now and trying to work out why your top two people are so far ahead of everybody else, go look at what they do the day before a call. That's usually where it is. It's rarely as mysterious as it looks from the middle of the board.