When you think about growing sales, where does your mind go first?
Finding another rock star? Getting more out of your top performers? Finally getting the people at the bottom of the bell curve to consistently make goal?
I’d like you to look somewhere else.
In the Bell Curve Manifesto, I talk about the 68% of salespeople who live in the middle of the curve. Today I want to narrow that down even further and look at the people from +0 to +1.
These are your “better than the middle” salespeople. They make goal more often than not. They know your products, your customers, and your sales process. They’re competent and capable, and every once in a while you see a flash of what they could do consistently.
Which is exactly why you tend to leave them alone.
They’re not on a performance improvement plan. They’re not creating problems that need your attention. They’re also not your rock stars, so you probably aren’t pulling them into conversations about your biggest opportunities.
They’re doing fine.
Last week I talked about how the “wild things” in sales ROAR for your attention. These salespeople usually don’t.
I believe they may be your hidden goldmine.
Not because I think you can magically turn every one of them into a top performer. That’s not the point of the Bell Curve Manifesto. The opportunity is in helping capable salespeople get a little bit better, then multiplying that improvement across several people on your team.
What could 5% be worth?
Imagine one of your better-than-the-middle salespeople averages $50,000/month in production.
$50,000 × 5% = $2,500 more per month
That doesn’t sound outrageous, does it? I’m not asking them to double production or suddenly become your #1 salesperson. I’m asking what it might take to help a capable salesperson improve by 5%.
Now imagine you have six salespeople in that part of your bell curve.
$2,500 × 6 salespeople = $15,000 more per month
Take that across a year and you’re looking at:
$15,000 × 12 = $180,000
Now we’re talking about real money.
And it didn’t require hiring another salesperson, squeezing more out of your rock star, or spending another quarter hoping someone at the bottom will finally turn it around.
It came from finding a little more gold in the people you already have.
Now do your team math.
Start simple. Take the average monthly production for one of your better-than-the-middle salespeople and multiply it by 5%.
Average monthly production × 5% = potential monthly growth
Do that for each salesperson in your +0 to +1 group. Add those numbers together, then multiply by 12.
Even better: pull the last three months of actual performance for each of those salespeople. Calculate each person’s three-month monthly average, then multiply their number by 5%.
Now you’re not working with my $50,000 example or a generic team average. You’re looking at what a relatively small improvement from the capable salespeople already on your team could actually be worth.
That’s your hidden goldmine.
Of course, doing the math doesn’t create the growth. Leadership does.
Once you know what that 5% could be worth, the interesting question becomes: What does each individual salesperson need from you to get there?
Perhaps it’s one skill they haven’t mastered yet. Maybe there’s something getting in their way that you haven’t uncovered. They might need clearer expectations, a bigger challenge, more coaching, or simply your belief that “fine” isn’t the limit of what they’re capable of.
That’s where the Bell Curve Manifesto becomes more than a theory about where salespeople sit on a curve.
It becomes a leadership strategy.
You don’t need everyone to become a rock star to create significant growth.
Sometimes you need to start mining the gold that’s already there.