Salespeople - The Difference Between Over Achievers and Under Achievers

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Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
I often post about overachieving and posted a comprehensive article on over achieving a few weeks back.  I've also written about under achieving and, for the first time, want to draw some comparisons between over and under achieving.

Underachievers make excuses for why they didn't get enough appointments while over achievers not only book more appointments than they need, but make sure that they're top quality appointments too.

Under achievers turn quality appointments into think-it-overs and maybes while over achievers close their closable opportunities.

Over achievers can't wait to update their pipelines, turn in their reports, and mentor others while under achievers need to be hounded to do even the most simple of these tasks because they're embarrassed about their performance.

You can depend on over achievers to hit their numbers month in and month out while you never know what you can expect from underachievers.

Over achievers have larger average sales, higher margins, better account retention, cleaner receivables and stronger relationships with their customers and clients.  Underachievers give price breaks, sell smaller accounts and orders, don't sell people what they really need, have deals fall through and cancel and think they have strong relationships with their customers and clients.

Over achievers set stretch goals and reach them while under achievers set safe goals and fail to reach them.

Over achievers allow you to feel confident and content, you must scramble to keep up with them but it's good scrambling.  Under achievers stress you out, tend to be high maintenance and don't provide a return on your investment of emotions and time.

I also posted recently about sales frauds.  Perhaps this explanation will help you identify the real producers from the sales frauds, the over achievers from the under achievers.

© Copyright 2007 Objective Management Group, Inc.

Posted by Dave Kurlan on Thu, Mar 08, 2007 @ 10:05 PM