Wouldn’t it be great if you could clone your top-performing salespeople and turn them loose? You could sit back, relax, and watch as you blow past revenue goals month after month.
While human cloning remains science fiction, advances in sales analytics and AI are making it possible to extract the secrets of your highest-earning reps and share them with your sales team. Modern tools can dig into all the data to decode precisely which actions, behaviors, and strategies set the superstars apart. These insights can then be used to coach your sales reps, guiding them to emulate your top performers’ success.
The Problem: An Uneven Sales Team
A typical sales organization follows the 80/20 rule – 80% of revenue comes from 20% of reps. There is usually a huge performance gap between the top sellers and the rest. While the rock stars consistently blow away quotas, the middle 60% underperform. They seem to be missing some key actions or approaches the high flyers have figured out.
Meanwhile, management fights an uphill battle trying to improve team-wide sales competency. Coaching lower performers takes up excessive leadership bandwidth. No matter how much training is provided, most reps fail to adopt the necessary skills that lead to success. The result is an army of mediocre salespeople producing lackluster revenue, while the few superhero closers work miracles quarter after quarter.
Decoding the Secrets of Success
Fortunately, AI sales tools can help crack the code of sales excellence. Modern revenue intelligence platforms examine historical deal data to determine what your best reps do differently. The software can parse millions of historical data points – emails sent, calls made, demos scheduled, deals won or lost. It uncovers hidden correlations between specific rep actions and closed sales.
The analysis reveals precise sequences that indicate future wins, such as:
- Sending personalized outreach after contract expiration predicts renewal.
- Scheduling a discovery call soon after a demo boosts conversion rates.
- Following up on cold calls with specific messaging converts more leads.
In essence, the algorithms clone the behaviors that distinguish top talent by reverse engineering their success patterns. They learn exactly which actions to take, with what messaging, towards which targets, and when – replicating the selling motions most likely to drive revenue.
Coaching Reps to Copy Top Performers
Once the software decodes what excellent execution looks like, it can coach the broader seller population on how to act more like the exceptional reps. AI-generated insights translate into extremely tailored and specific guidance for each team member.
The system creates personalized prescriptive recommendations that prompt individuals to adopt the right behaviors for closing more deals:
- Your win rate improves by 15% when sending renewal alerts 90 days before contract expiration. You have 6 customers expiring next month to follow up with.
- Top reps in your segment schedule discovery calls within two days of a demo. You have 5 new demo attendees to schedule calls with ASAP.
- Calls to Director-level contacts see 2x conversion rates when followed by the Top Performer Email within 24 hrs. Log these follow-ups for your last three Director calls.
The beauty is every rep receives individualized direction on replicating behaviors that work for people like them. The entire sales floor benefits from cloning what your top performers do, while still allowing some personalization based on their strengths.
Accelerating Performance Gains
The exciting outcome is that cloning top performers soon ceases to be science fiction. As below-average reps start emulating Proven Sequences, their sales competency accelerates rapidly. Adoption of prescribed actions more than doubles in the first few weeks. Even rookie sellers begin executing like veterans.
Within a quarter or two, lagging player success rates catch up with the team average. Formerly weak links transform into solid contributors. Better selling technique gets infused across the board, as reps replicate approaches that work based on hard evidence.
As the team adopts sequences proven to convert, performance skyrockets:
- Higher contact and response rates from better-targeted outreach
- More pipelines created through effective lead follow-up
- Higher win rates owing to far better execution
Enterprise productivity and sales efficiency increase exponentially. Quota attainment rises rapidly across the board, without requiring more activity. Reps spend time doing the right things – that directly impact revenue – rather than spray-and-pray tactics.
