Episode 158: The 3 Things the Top 1% of Sales Leaders Will Do Differently in 2026

In this episode, you'll discover what 1% of leaders will do differently in 2026 to hit rapid sales growth. 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 episode, you will learn the three things that 1% of leaders will do differently in 2026 to hit sales growth and how you can roll these into your business or team to achieve those same sales growth numbers. Sales leadership Whether you're running a business and running the sales team and even doing the sales yourself or, or leading just a sales team on its own, but certainly sales leadership is one of the most difficult roles I have seen across my career and I have covered almost every role across businesses. Given that I've had a number of startups that have quickly built, I've needed to perform CEO roles, COO roles, operations manager roles, sales roles, lead generation roles, marketing roles, finance roles, office admin roles, business cleaner roles. I've seen them all and really recognize that Sales leadership, managing a team of individuals who are trained to influence people, or just being a sales leader who also sells yourself in your business. Right. So selling and leading your business is super, super difficult. So what I'd like to do is give you a bit of a leg up into 2026. We've got a couple of days till the year ends. I'd like you to have a think about what 1% of leaders are going to be doing differently next year to hit their sales growth. Now, how do I know this? Well, I've worked with hundreds of salespeople over the last 12 months and thousands across my career. I've worked with dozens and dozens of sales leaders over the last 12 months and hundreds across my career and I've run a number of businesses. Now, I definitely don't want to make this about me, but what I do want to say is that there's a fair broad spectrum of perspective. I've seen a lot of deals and a lot of salespeople over this time. So I start to see what some of these trends are in teams succeeding before they eventuate. And there's three things that I'm seeing happen in 2026 from 1% of leaders. Well, I'm seeing them happen already for 1% of leaders who are really going to thrive in 2026, number one, and there may be an eye roll here, it's to prioritise customers. So often I see sales leaders say, yes, we do, we prioritise customers. And when I ask them what the lead turnaround time is, they tell me one to two business days, not five minutes, not immediately contacting a customer. When they're most excited to talk about us, we talk about how you get out to site and they talk about certain days of the week or times, not when it meets the customer. We talk about quoting turnaround time and they talk about days rather than hours for non complex deals. We talk about flexibility in offerings and they talk about either having way too many offers that confuse customers or not enough offers to provide flexibility. The list goes on and on and on. But the 1% of leaders who are really going to succeed this year will absolutely prioritize customers and mandate this into their sales processes, get really clear on lead contact times, on how they quote, on how they follow up, on how they create a customer experience or a sales experience rather than a sales process. They focus with the customer always on their mind around how they can do better and better and more and more for them. Number two is they're focused on creating value, right? This flows directly from number one, right? When you're prioritizing customers, it becomes far easier to think about how you can create value for these customers, right? It comes down to making sure we are asking more questions rather than giving answers. We've just bought a commercial property up here on the Sunshine coast and we have a super exciting content studio launching shortly. We had today a supplier come through that studio for one of the first things they asked was around roof clearances. They went and measured and they said, right, do you know how high your roof clearances are here? And we went through them and what we realized is that some of our ideas we aren't able to bring to life because of restrictions on the roof height. Right? This happened because our supplier was prepared to stop, measure, ask us around what's important and then create value from that. Now this supplier is miles ahead of the others because they created that value early by helping us recognise a potential mistake. So the 1% of leaders really doing it differently in 2026, they're not only focusing on prioritizing customers, but also on creating value for those. And the third piece here is that the 1% of leaders really nailing 2026 sales growth are removing complexity from their funnels, reducing the number of reports, making it easier for themselves or their teams to quote Right. Reducing quote approval times, focusing on sales at certain times of the day rather than trying to squeeze it in between all of their jobs. Right. That is complex and difficult to manage. Setting aside time, really focusing on reducing or removing what doesn't add value in their sales processes. Whether you're a leader of a business with a team or you're on your own and driving that sales function, if you can reduce complexity and remove duplication, that then allows you to focus on more customer deals. Prioritizing these customers and creating value. Right. Number one and two easily open up when you're removing complexity. So there without doubt what 1% of leaders are doing differently in 2026 prioritising customers. In more than just words. They're actually doing it through actions. They're creating value by understanding what customers want and pairing their solutions to it. And they're removing complexity to give them that time to prioritise customers and create value. Now, as we move into 2026 and we move into New Year's Eve and hopefully some downtime for you, I'm hopeful that you'll take away from this episode a couple of thoughts around how you might be able to align what you're doing with the 1% of leaders who are really going to grow next year. Pick one or two of those, see where you can apply it to your business, and I hope you can walk away with a real positive and excited feeling about what's ahead for 2026. Thank you for joining in today. We're grateful as always to have you here. We drop episodes every Monday, Wednesday and Friday and we have a real focus around getting 1% better each and every day. Because like the 1% of leaders who are doing things differently in 2026, if you can focus on being that 1% better each and every day, it will make all the difference. Bye for now. 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 software 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 instantly confirm your meeting time.