Episode 152: 5 Sales Lessons From Working With 250+ Salespeople That Will Help Leaders Boost Sales Growth in 2026

In this episode, you will learn five lessons from working with over 250 salespeople in 2025. Welcome to Sales Process Made Easy. The show helping seven to eight figure industry construction and trade sales and business leaders. Finally, end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host, Ben Wright, and a leader who has been building businesses and sales teams just like you for the last 20 years. In this lesson, you will learn the key lessons that we have brought together from helping over 250 salespeople in the last 12 months and some ways that you can take these lessons to help you create an even stronger sales result into 2026. There's no doubt we've worked with a lot of salespeople over the last 12 months in the trade industry and construction segments. We have worked with electricians, plumbers, landscape gardeners, building suppliers, mortgage brokers, heavy machinery and equipment, renewables businesses, painters. The list goes on and on of the types of businesses that we have worked with in this industry. Finance providers to the business industry, in particular materials handling industries, commercial tenants, commercial warehousing specialists. Right. I could go on and on. I'm trying to create a flavor that we have had some serious volume of salespeople, sales leaders and business leaders that we've worked with across this period of time. What's come out really clearly, though, are some key lessons that we've needed to focus on with these teams again and again and again. And today we're going to be sharing those with you with a tip around each of those around how you can make the next 12 months more successful for you across any of these areas. I remember two years ago, I did a heavy research project. It was a global research project that we commissioned and it was focused on what's keeping leaders and sales leaders up, what's keeping them up at night and causing them headaches. Number one was actually getting enough staff. Think back to that two or three years ago when it was just so difficult to get good people. Right now that's eased somewhat, but certainly there are still challenges out in the market. Number two was all about how you get the best out of those staff, about making sure they're communicating effectively with customers, that they're working hard, that they're turning up in a hybrid working environment and they're not simply being lazy at a sales level and emailing and texting right to try and get deals done. In fact, I sat with a customer of ours today and I was gobsmacked that he met with a supplier. This is a big reasonable business, $40 million a year business, but certainly a big business for many privately owned enterprises because when you get into that number, your profit levels are life changing. But for him, he was dealing with a supplier who came to his meeting half an hour late, didn't have a notepad or pen, was very non colonial, very relaxed and careless in terms of how he dealt with them as a customer, and when asked questions, didn't give great answers or constructive or proactive support to help them move forward. Now this person in this business was infuriated when they spoke to me because they felt completely unappreciated and that their business wasn't important. And my response to the customer of mine was, don't work with this supplier anymore. Find someone else. Find someone who wants your business. Find someone who is eager and hungry to succeed. And unfortunately I've seen this sense of apathy, this lack of engagement, right? And perhaps you've seen it too, right, in yourself, right? At times when you're overwhelmed or in your sales team and just how much it can turn you off wanting to work with that person or that business. And really that's number one lesson this year because I've seen it too many times and that is sales just don't happen. If you run through what you do, you call the lead within a reasonable period of time, you quote them, right? And you expect that, okay, we'll hit an average close rate of 1 in 3 or 1 in 4 or 1 in 5, right. It simply doesn't just happen that way. I work with businesses this year whose close rates dropped down to 9%. Now we were able to bump that back up to 16% in four weeks, right? Which was, I mean it's a great result from where they were at. However, their close rate was very, very low. So lesson number one is it doesn't just happen. And the answer here, the tip here is to make sure you are constantly trying to focus on improving what you do or at the very least meeting customers where they're at, right. It's one of the five points around creating value, which we'll get to. I don't want to spoil it, right. But if you expect that sales are just going to happen and that's your mindset, expect a challenging next 12 months. If you need something to cling onto. Now, we spoke or we do speak a lot about 1% better. The forward coming episodes are going to work a lot around that. Keep listening and you'll start to Build out perhaps a way of being or a way of approaching your business life, or even your life might help you. Number two. Lesson number two is to leverage strengths. So often I've seen businesses who have tried to do too much. They have simply tried to be everything to everyone. They've tried to have their salespeople do everything, have them bring in new leads so hunting, have them closing leads, have them farming and then managing key accounts moving forward. It's simply too much to expect from many sales people or sales teams that they do everything at once. The inverse of this is to be leveraging strength. Know what your team are good at, know what you're good at, know what your business is good at. If you're in charge of leading the sales function in your business, really understand how you win deals, right? And the way that you can best engage with customers. If your strength's face to face, leverage it. If your strength is not. Emails, don't use them. I have a customer who it takes them a significant amount of time to create emails and the advice to them is rather than use email as your primary method of contact or a regular method of contact, use the phone. Now, he's already across that, of course, but so often we see that salespeople are not across it or that leaders are trying to get everyone to do too much, right? So lesson number one is it doesn't just happen. You need to focus in on making sure you do the basics well. Number two is to leverage strengths. Number three is to get clear on who you serve, who you best provide. Think about a time when you've been closing deals more often than not and whether or not you have a customer that you think matches really well with your business. In my business, I'm certainly capable of helping anything from C suite leaders of up to my largest customer in recent times has been just under $5 billion in revenue through to small startups. But where I've chosen to focus is is businesses between 1 and 50 million who have leaders in them who are in the early stages of their career and they are hungry to grow, right? Particularly those in the trade, construction and industry segments. Because I know in those industries I have a very high success rate of moving the dial for sales. I know I have a very high success rate of young leaders who are running a landscape business or a painting business or a construction business, grow their business quickly, reduce the stress on them and increase their profits. So for me, I focus very heavily on that segment even though I know I can service more. And yes, if something comes along where I can help a bigger business. And it works within the model that I've got, I'll absolutely do it. But for me, number three is getting clear on who you serve. And the tip here to do that is to think back about or review the deals you've won over the last 12 months and see where those natural segments come out. Very nice way to get you to just flow into those. The fourth piece here is around creating value. So often over the last 12 months and prior to that, I've seen salespeople not focusing on creating value. Now that doesn't mean that they're bad people or bad operators, but they've been really worried about presenting what they offer rather than how it might create value for customers. So just because you have a materials handling business that has the fastest charging unit in the country, that may not be important to your customers because they charge overnight and don't care. They're more interested in units with the longest battery life. So they're fine if they charge slowly, but the battery life is more important to them. And the way we focus on creating value is to make sure that in every sales engagement, early in our sales process, when we're qualifying first at lead stage and when we are going through our first meet and greet, is that we are asking customers what's important to them. There's a framework called the 3D's our sold out sales team academy. Go through it in quite a lot of detail, but it's all about getting the first day, the deliverables really clear so we understand what our customers need. Because when we do that, we can start to line up what we can offer that meets that value. So number one is recognizing that sales don't just happen. Number two is about leveraging strengths rather than getting everyone to do everything. Number three is getting really clear on who you best serve, who you best look after, whether you be a product or service, residential or commercial, but understanding who your ideal customers are. I'm sure you've heard the ideal customer tag before, but even to this day, many businesses I work with don't do it. So getting clear on who you serve, creating value for these customers by asking questions early and last but not least is a real positive one, is that I have seen change happen really quickly in the modern sales environment. I have seen businesses in the one to $10 million mark double and triple in very short periods of time. I've seen businesses in the 10 to $50 million mark grow their sales by double digit amounts just by making small regular improvements. So change can happen quickly. If you've had a tough year, don't worry. There are potentially easier times ahead. So to recap today from helping a lot of people over the last 12 months in particular, I've seen habits that have become really clear and consistent. Quite commonly the five of those and ways to improve those are Number one is that success doesn't just happen. So we need to be focused on doing the good things or the basics again and again and again and again. We need to be leveraging strengths because too often salespeople and sales leaders and businesses are trying to do too much. So focus on your strengths. Get them right. Number three is get clear on who you serve. Focus on those customers that love working with you because you will simply close more of them and and be thankful for it. Your future self in particular will be thankful for it. Number four is create value as often as you can and do that by asking questions. And number five is recognize that change can happen quickly so things can turn around and you can really get some strong growth moving forward. So as we get towards the end of this year, when you're in, you know, often in chaotic markets, it's really difficult trying to close out right? Find some quiet time. I hope that this podcast will leave you with a moment to recognize that some of the problems you may be having are shared across others, but also that there's some good solutions there that are easy to implement. Really grateful that you jump on board with this podcast. Every week we focus on short and sharp sales process improvements to help you get 1% better every day. We drop podcasts every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But really importantly, between now and our next episode, please keep that focus on being 1% better each and every day because it will make all the difference. Are you struggling to grow your monthly sales numbers? Feel like you've reached a sales ceiling, are involved in every deal, or have no real sales system in place to help you grow? And is that causing a level of worry or stress about how you can get more sales in the future? If that's you, that's exactly why we created the Sold Out Sales Teams program to help you get month on month sales growth with less stress in just the first week, we will lock down your quoting process to grow sales by 25 to 30%. And that's just week one. And for the first three podcast listeners that we speak to this week, we'll offer you a bonus one on one strategy session with me to make sure you can pay off your investment even faster. Which by the way, for most businesses is only one or two extra sales. To book in, click the link in our Show Notes. It's a direct calendar link, so you can enter instantly confirm your meeting time.