Sixty five percent of everything that is sold in North America is sold by 15 percent of the sales people. Fifty percent of everything that is sold is sold by the top one percent of the sales people.

Why is that? Why does that take place? What is it that the top 15 percent do that the bottom 85 percent don’t do? Or, what personal characteristics do the top 15 percent have that the bottom 85 percent don’t have?

In this article, I would like to introduce you to the Magnificent Seven Characteristics of Sales Superstars that I teach in the New School Selling Sales Management Training. I would encourage you to do a mental check, and be very honest with yourself about whether or not your sales producers possess these characteristics in great measure.

The first characteristics of sales superstars is their desire level or their ambition level. The top performing sales superstars have an unbelievable desire or ambition to make money.

That should not be surprising to anyone. It’s called a utilitarian attitude.

The reason the top performers make so much money is because it is extremely important to them to make a lot of money. When someone says to me, "money is not that important, I don’t really care that much about making money", I can promise that individual has a very small bank account. I’m not putting any judgment on the desire to make money or the ambition to make money. I’ll leave that up to you to decide whether or not that individual’s psychology healthy or well-balanced or what have you.

But the fact of the matter is, if money is not your single focus, if making money is not a burning desire of yours, if it’s not something that you are thinking about quite a during your waking hours, and if you are not passionate about it, if you are not obsessed about it, then chances are you won’t make significantly more money than you’re making now.

FACT: if you have sales producers on your team who are not money motivated there is no amount of sales management training that will help you turn a donkey into a thoroughbred.

Number two is personal accountability. Now, you may have your own idea or definition about what personal accountability is or is not.

The definition that I’m using for personal accountability is what I call a no excuses mindset. This individual takes total responsibility for their life’s circumstances.

They do not blame anybody or anything for their lack of success or lack of results. They completely accept the fact that whatever their life situation is, it is of their own doing and of their own making.

The opposite of personal accountability is making excuses. Making excuses about the weather. Or making excuses that we had a hurricane. Or that we had 12 inches of rain yesterday. Or that the economy’s gone to hell in a hand basket. Or nobody’s buying or people are cutting back on their budget. Or people are laid off. Or you know, you fill in the blank anything and everything.

The truth of the matter is, if you want to make an excuse about why you’re not making more money, you can pick anyone you want because there are plenty of them out there. But the sales superstars say, "The only reason I’m not making more money is, I’m not doing what I need to do to make more money, and there’s always opportunity out there, there’s always money out there."

People are always buying. I mean we’ve got nearly a $3 trillion economy in the United States, so people are spending and $3 trillion a year buying something.

The sales superstar who has a high degree of personal accountability says, "hey it might be tough out there, but I’m going to get my share. And I’m not going to let anything or anybody get in my way."

Number three is self-starting. A Self Starter needs little outside motivation or management to do what needs to be done, when it needs to be done whether they want to do it or not.

The person lacking in self-starting is constantly having to be motivated, and they’re having to be managed by someone to go do what they need to do in order to achieve the result that they need to achieve. Top performing sales people, the top 15 percent of sales people. don’t need any management, they don’t need someone managing them, telling them that they need to go make calls, they need to do this, they need to do that.

Now, that does not mean that they’re not open to coaching that will make them better. Truth is top performers are the ones who most often seek out coaching to get better. A person who possesses this self-starting characteristic, is willing to go to work and are they willing to do it when they’re tired and they are willing to do it when they got the flu. They are willing to do it when they don’t feel good. They are willing to make themselves do what needs to be done, and when it needs to done whether they want to do it or not. It is not about how they feel.

There aren’t too many people that push themselves to that level.

We live in a culture full of lazy, un-ambitious, unmotivated and entitled people. These are the ones that make up the bottom 85 percent.

So, think about this, how are you doing in the self-starting category? Are you totally self-motivated or do you need someone to motivate you to encourage you to go do what you need to do?

Everybody gets down, everybody gets depressed. Will not go through life without being depressed from time to time. You know, basically stuff happens to you all the time. And if you hadn’t had something terrible happen to you this week just hold on it will come. And there’s always stuff going on in our lives that would derail us and prevent us and allow us to basically make an excuse for not doing what we need to do.

Not so with the top performers. They experience failure, frustration and tragedy like everyone. They just deal with the best they can and get on with it as quickly as possible. In the end, that is the only way to deal with any of life’s issues.