Align with excellence
If you truly desire standout results in sales, your path is clear: align your sales behaviors with those who consistently achieve the extraordinary. Success leaves clues, but it also leaves very specific behaviors, practices, and strategic choices that can be studied, adopted, and replicated. In sales, the leap from mediocrity to mastery often hinges on carefully selecting the behaviors you adopt and, importantly, those you abandon.
The gravitational pull of average sales behavior
Human nature is a gravitational force that constantly pulls us back to behaviors that are popular, comfortable, and commonly practiced by peers. Unfortunately, average behaviors yield average results. Top sales performers don’t simply outperform by working harder; they consistently do different things, make different strategic choices, and maintain different habits than the average salesperson.
“Growth and comfort do not coexist.” – Ginni Rometty, former CEO of IBM
The first critical realization is understanding that it’s not enough to simply be different from average performers—you must be similar to top performers. This requires ruthless objectivity to step outside yourself, identify your current habits, practices, and beliefs, and courageously measure them against top performance standards.
As entrepreneur and motivational speaker Jim Rohn famously said:
“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.”
This reality in sales cannot be overstated. You must actively choose to associate yourself with high-performance role models and meticulously emulate their proven sales behaviors.
Choosing Mentors Wisely
Perhaps no single decision in your professional journey has greater impact than selecting your mentors. The right mentors accelerate your progress, helping you swiftly adopt the behaviors that lead to superior results. Conversely, selecting mentors carelessly—or worse, accepting advice from self-proclaimed experts who’ve never achieved what you seek—can inflict lasting harm, steering you toward ineffective methods. Accepting advice from those willing to tell you what is more comfortable to hear, not what you need to hear, will delay if not totally deny you the goal you seek..
When you select mentors, verify their authenticity. Have they demonstrably achieved the outcomes you desire? Do they practice what they preach? Beware of mentors who talk an impressive game but whose results are theoretical or exaggerated.
Moreover, the best mentors are those willing to share their complete journeys openly—the failures, missteps, and tough lessons, along with their successes. No one ever achieves greatness or superior results without mistakes, missteps, and failures along the way. If someone is not candid about the challenges they’ve faced and overcome, you must question what else they might not be revealing. Transparency and authenticity in a mentor are not merely desirable—they’re essential.
As Brene Brown writes in her book Daring Greatly:
“Vulnerability sounds like truth and feels like courage. Truth and courage aren’t always comfortable, but they’re never weakness.”
Seek out sales mentors who exhibit this courage and truthfulness.
Harness data, be ruthlessly objective
Success is rarely accidental; it is intentional, data-driven, and measurable. Create a top-performance checklist—itemizing the strategic choices, habits, and skills that statistically correlate to exceptional outcomes. Then relentlessly measure your current behaviors against this checklist.
Objectivity here is paramount. It requires stepping outside of yourself, viewing your behaviors with detachment and honesty, and resisting the instinct to rationalize why what you’re comfortable doing is acceptable. It is challenging—yet entirely necessary—to acknowledge that certain comfortable habits or common practices and some beliefs you hold near and dear to your heart might be actively sabotaging your success. Avoid self-sabotaging behaviors.
Consider this quote from W. Edwards Deming, renowned expert on continual improvement:
“Without data, you’re just another person with an opinion.”
Using data to objectively assess and align your behaviors with proven success patterns is one of the most powerful leverage points for rapid sales improvement.
At times, actually many times your behaviors and practices will not have statistical significance, meaning that you don’t do them enough for the data to be determinative of what works. If you send out 5,000 emails and split test two different subject lines, the response rate data suffices to tell you which one worked best.
But if you try a new sales script ten times, that is not a high enough frequency to have statistical significance. In these cases, you will have to make a judgment as to whether your script is on the right track or not. The more you know about the sales behaviors and practices of legitimate top performers, and the more objective you can be, the better judgments you will make.
Deliberate practice and the path to excellence
Simply observing and superficially copying successful behaviors is insufficient. To truly align with top performers, you must engage in deliberate practice. This is a structured approach to learning that involves intentionally practicing specific behaviors, receiving feedback, making adjustments, going deep and continuously improving your skills. It’s challenging and uncomfortable, but it’s also the shortest and most reliable route to superior sales performance.
Anders Ericsson, renowned researcher on expertise, emphasizes:
“Deliberate practice involves stepping outside your comfort zone and trying activities beyond your current abilities. It demands near-maximal effort, which is generally not enjoyable.”
Embrace this discomfort. Deliberate practice, consistently applied, transforms ordinary salespeople into elite performers. Go deep. Everyone is enthusiastic when starting something new and everyone loves to celebrate when something works. But pushing through the middle to get there is tough and what separates top performers from the rest of the pack..
Stay sharp and focused
Your top-performance checklist should never remain static. Markets evolve, customers change, and competitors adapt. Continual reassessment is essential to ensure that your behaviors and practices remain sharply aligned with current top-performance standards.
Schedule regular check-ins—monthly or quarterly—to revisit your checklist and ensure you’re still emulating behaviors that produce exceptional results. Stay flexible and open to adapting new practices as conditions and standards evolve.
Peter Drucker powerfully reinforces the importance of continual reassessment:
“If you want something new, you have to stop doing something old.”
Never hesitate to let go of behaviors that no longer serve your pursuit of excellence.
Mindset and Attitude Alignment: The Inner Game of Sales
Top sales performers differ from their average peers not only in their behaviors but also in their mindset and attitudes. Adopt not just external behaviors but internal attitudes of resilience, optimism, and adaptability.
Carol Dweck, author of Mindset, explains this clearly:
“Becoming is better than being. A growth mindset is about continuous learning, stretching yourself, and being willing to fail.”
Aligning your mindset with that of high performers ensures sustainable, long-term results, turning setbacks into opportunities and failures into stepping-stones.
The discipline to change
Finally, embracing top-performer behaviors requires discipline. High-performing behaviors initially feel awkward, unnatural, or even incorrect simply because they deviate from popular practice and personal comfort zones.
Yet, the discipline to persist in behaviors validated by top performers—despite personal discomfort or peer skepticism—is precisely what separates outstanding sales professionals from their average counterparts.
Change expert Robin Sharma captures it well:
“Change is hard at first, messy in the middle, and gorgeous at the end.” – Robin Sharma
“Most people never run far enough on their first wind to find out they’ve got a second.” – William James
Prepare for discomfort. Expect resistance from peers who prefer familiarity over results. Discipline yourself to practice these new behaviors until they become second nature. Eventually, your consistent results will speak louder than any skepticism or criticism around you.
Align yourself intentionally with top performers. Practice deliberately, reassess continually, choose authentic mentors wisely, and adopt the mindset required for elite results. By doing so, you will rise decisively above the gravitational pull of average—and achieve the top performance you are capable of.
