Category: Art of the Acquisition

I have been building companies my entire life.

At my first company, Wilmar/Interline, we had 450 inside and outside salespeople by the time I stepped down as CEO—all across multiple brands and saleschannels. And just like most CEOs and company leaders, I was constantly scratching my head as to why the top 15-20% of our salespeople were consistently outperforming the remaining 75-80%. This is something that happens at just about every company I know, where the “top performers” rise to the top and then stay there, while others with very similar qualities or nearly identical sales pitches fail to close at anywhere near the same rate.

But over the course of my career, I’ve learned why:

The secret ingredient is prospecting. Or should I say, how often you prospect.