Book SummaryThe Ultimate Sales Machine, by Chet Holmes

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of The Ultimate Sales Machine

In The Ultimate Sales Machine, Chet Holmes argues that the secret to sales success is relentless discipline, determination, and above all, repetition of a few steps. For Holmes, sales mastery is intensive, not extensive—it’s about being an unmatched expert in a relative handful of things, not being adequate or average at many things.

But it requires hard work. You and your entire team have to be fully committed to refining and perfecting every aspect of your new sales strategy to ensure that everyone in the company is an expert in talking to customers, generating leads, conveying your company’s value proposition, and servicing clients. This means discipline, focus, and most importantly, plenty of practice.

Holmes’s strategy for accomplishing this includes:

• Changing the way you do meetings
• Implementing an effective time management system
• Building an all-star sales team by recruiting people with the right personality and optimizing their skills with regular,...

The Ultimate Sales Machine Summary Change the Way You Do Meetings

According to Holmes, the first step to building a high-performing sales operation is effective time management. And a major part of effective time management is changing the way you do meetings. Simply put, many managers are engaged in far too many meetings with employees every day to be productive.

(Shortform note: In fact, in 2017, executives spent an average of 23 hours a week in meetings, up from 10 hours in the 1960s. Further, 65% of senior executives reported that meetings kept them from finishing their own work.)

No “Open Door” Policy

Holmes recommends one quick way to curb the requests for your time from employees—end your “open-door” policy. People at the company shouldn’t be able to just saunter into your office at any time to talk about anything they want, whether...

The Ultimate Sales Machine Summary Build a Time Management System

Holmes writes that you need to go beyond meeting reform. You have to implement a comprehensive time management system that enables you to extract the most productivity and value from your days.

While time management can certainly boost your productivity and help you make efficient use of this most limited resource, some experts warn that excessive time management and adherence to the clock can lead to undue mental stress. Instead of structuring your day around objective time—the way we parcel out concrete measurements of time through clocks and calendars—some research recommends instead focusing on subjective time.

Subjective time is your personal experience of the past, present, and future, and how they blend and intersect. Surrendering to subjective time can allow you to get more deeply absorbed in the work you find most fulfilling, while freeing you from the objective and often arbitrary rules that define when certain events should occur and how long they should last.

Tactic #1: Prioritize Your Responses to...

The Ultimate Sales Machine Summary Build Your All-Star Sales Team

Holmes writes that building a great team is the cornerstone to an effective sales operation. With the right talent, your business can grow exponentially; with bad hires, you’ll find yourself throwing money away and constantly treading water.

What To Do When You’ve Made a Bad Hire

Bad hiring decisions are indeed one of the thorniest personnel problems companies face. According to the Harvard Business Review, a whopping 46% of new hires are considered to be failures by the time they hit the 18-month mark with their companies. If you think you’ve made a poor hiring decision that’s dragging down the rest of your company, some experts advise that your next move often comes down to a cost-benefit analysis.

If the cost of keeping your bad hire (such as missed sales, overburdening the rest of the company, reduced morale) outweighs the costs of firing them (such as the time and money it takes to hire a replacement and train someone new) then often the best decision is to let them go.

Find People With the Right Personality

**Holmes argues that you don’t find great salespeople by looking...

The Ultimate Sales Machine Summary Optimize Your Team With Training

Once you’ve hired the right people, continue to raise their skill level through mandatory and regular training. This helps you set consistently high standards and prepares employees for any situation.

(Shortform note: Some companies do their sales training in-house, while some hire an outside consultant like Holmes to conduct these sessions. But even if you have to pay for it initially, the training will reap rewards that will more than recoup your investment. In Sell or be Sold, Grant Cardone writes that simply closing the sales you’re currently missing through inadequate training alone will justify the costs.)

Maximize Effectiveness With Interactive Training

But, Holmes cautions, not just any training will do. It needs to be consistent, regular, interactive, and fun. One-off annual training events where employees are simply lectured to for a few hours isn’t going to have any lasting impact. Real skill-building, writes Holmes, comes when employees are engaged in the training and participating in shaping their...

The Ultimate Sales Machine Summary Market Like a Champ

Holmes writes that your entire marketing campaign needs to be synchronized and coordinated across every tactic—from print ads to online ads, roadshows, press releases, television and radio spots, and viral marketing.

Showcase Your Value With Instructional Marketing

Holmes writes that it’s important to showcase your value to the customer through instructional marketing. Rather than just pitching how prestigious your company is or how great your products are, instructional marketing teaches your customers the value your company can provide to them. For example, if you’re selling cybersecurity services, you wouldn’t just create advertisements that talk about how many graduates from elite universities are on your engineering team or the awards you’ve won.

To really distinguish yourself, your marketing campaign should focus on the value you provide, specifically how you can help your customers meet their needs. Thus, as a cybersecurity company, you’d want to focus on how your products can ensure that their online activities will be private and secure—giving customers the peace of mind that comes with not having to worry about stolen data or identity...

The Ultimate Sales Machine Summary Find Your Dream Customers

Once you have your all-star sales team in place and have honed and refined your sales and marketing processes, Holmes writes that it’s time to target your dream customers.

He says that dream customers are large, frequent, and quick buyers. It’s important to target your advertising and marketing at them because for most businesses, a relative handful of customers account for most of the revenue.

The Pareto Principle: Focus on the Big-Ticket Items

Some sales experts have even codified this principle into a rule known as the “80/20 Rule.” The 80/20 rule in sales says that 80% of your revenue comes from just 20% of your customers—therefore, you should focus most of your attention on serving and satisfying that subset of your customer base.

In fact, the 80/20 Rule for sales is just one application of a bigger idea known as the Pareto principle. In Factfulness, Hans Rosling defines the Pareto principle as the rule that, in most datasets, 80% of the results come from 20% of the causes. This rule applies to a variety of datasets, including causes of death, line items...

The Ultimate Sales Machine Summary Measure Your Success

Holmes writes that once you’ve put in place all the steps for sales success—recruiting and hiring the right talent, developing your team through interactive training, showcasing your value through instructional marketing, and acquiring your dream customers—you need to measure your success.

It’s important, Holmes says, to establish metrics or key performance indicators (KPIs) that enable you to quantify and track your progress. The most obvious metric is total sales figures and revenue, but there are other measurable data that help to drive sales, including:

• Calls made to prospective customers
• Emails sent
• Direct mail delivered
• Instructional marketing events held (and attendance at each event)
• New leads generated

Holmes writes that tracking every metric will help you build a database that will enable you to continue to hone and refine your sales operation. As you delve into the numbers, you’ll get a better sense of what works and what doesn’t and the...

Shortform Exercise: Identify Your Priorities

Think about the most important things you need to accomplish each day—and what might be standing in your way.

Do you currently create a prioritized list of things you need to accomplish each day? If not, what do you think the benefits of doing so might be?

Shortform Exercise: Rethink How to Build a Team

Consider what attributes you find the most important in recruiting members of your team.

Holmes writes that personality counts for more than experience in hiring decisions. Do you agree with this statement? If not, explain what you think is the most important thing to take into account with new hires.