How do champions get to be champions? Why did the Yankees win 8 more games than the Red Sox? Why were the Yankees the winning-est team in baseball this year? Did the Yankees surpass the Red Sox in every category of performance? No. The Red Sox hit more doubles, more triples and stole more bases than the Yankees, but I think the Yankees focused on basics and proved that if you can do incrementally better on the basics, it adds up.

From the MLB Stats page:

The Yankees came to bat 5,660 times during the season. The Red Sox batted 5,543 times. Both played 162 games. That's less than 1 extra at bat per game! A 2% increase.

Why the increase? Could be because the Red Sox struck out 106 times more than the Yankees. Less than 1 extra strike out per game. A 9% difference.

The Yankees batted .283. The Red Sox batted .270. 13 over 270 = 4.8% better.

But remember that the Yankees had 117 extra at bats, so the combination of more at bats and doing more with them translated into over 7% more hits. Those hits translated into 7% more bases earned. Those bases translated into 5% more runs. And those runs translated into 8 more games won.

You can play with the rest of the statistics if you want, but enough about baseball. Does this work in selling? What are your critical ratios? What would happen if you could improve each by 10%? What would next year look like?

What did you do last year? Did you make 2,000 calls? Did you meet with 10% (200) of them? Did 10% (20) of them buy from you? Was your average sale $1,000, so you wound up selling $20,000 for the year?

What happens if you improve your effectiveness at each step by 10%

A 10% increase in calls means you'd make 2,200 calls. 11% (242) of them would meet with you. 11% of the 242 would by from you. That's 27 sales and if your average is $1,100, your total sales are over $29,000. That's a 46% increase to your bottom line!

Simple? Yes. Easy? HMMM?

Let's face it. The Yankees won their way back to the top. Would you like to know?

How Successful Companies Sell Their Way Back to the Top

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