In B2B sales, the top 1% have this in common

In B2B sales, the top 1% have this in common

Last updated: September 15, 2026

To me, the #1 reason why top producers become great comes down to belief. Their belief is rooted in the fact they truly think their solution is what the customer needs to solve their problems beyond anything they can do for themselves. This level of conviction gives them a superpower of total alignment to the client. No longer persuading people, just finding the right alignment based on a belief they can deliver what the client needs, wants, and expects. So, if that is the core attribute of top salespeople, then how do they get there?

We must first recognize that the source of your belief in sales does not come from you. Thirty years in sales has taught me the best source for this comes from the customer. It does not come from some new marketing tactic or product feature. It's about what the customer deems important to them. Sales is about serving the needs of the customer through alignment.

Your belief increases the more you know about the customer's business challenges and why they exist today. Here we learn if we're even capable of solving their problems in a way that is better, faster, and more sustainable than what they have in place.

Belief improves the more we know our competition. We need to understand who we're up against. The competition also has a level of belief based on their time with the customer and the depth of their relationships. We can have customer knowledge coming out of our ears, but if we don't know our competition and the plays they're running, then our faith could be rocked at any time.

We need access to the key people who are fully vested in solving problems and have the power to do something about it. This takes time, but without it, your belief will suffer and revert to persuasion tactics like discounting, kickbacks, and settling for table scraps while the competition is winning larger deals.

To have a strong belief in what we are doing, we need the support of our internal executives. This one tends to get overlooked. Listen, you must manage your leaders by keeping them informed, adding them to key meetings, and making a business case for what you need for the solution to work for the customer. When your executives truly have your back and believe you will win, grow, and/or protect this account, you will be unstoppable in the marketplace. But you have to manage this professionally and proactively, and don't assume that a pat on the back is alignment. It's not.

We need to believe we have a strong pricing and contract strategy, one that aligns well with the value of the solution to the customer based on the outcomes they can expect. This is where most sellers react until a buying signal is sent up. Not the top producer. The right pricing and contract are built to suit the needs of the customer without compromising scope, quality, timing, scale, and sustainability. These five elements are factored into every conversation, and they come from the customer's point of view.

Last, but not least, a strong belief in sales comes from running a system that makes all these things possible. A system that places the seller in the best position to do the work that makes winning easier and more consistent.

So, we distilled this type of work into a system every account team can use called the Vitality Index, the Key Account Growth System. It was built from the same approach we used to create long-term growth inside complex accounts: understand the entire partnership, identify where growth and risk exist, know what needs to happen next, and keep the team executing regardless of who is managing the account.

Winning, growing, and protecting key accounts has been our life's work for the past 30 years. The system will help most sellers willing to master strategic sales in less than a year. If becoming a top-producing account team is important to you, then the Vitality Index can help.

We made a sample for you to try. This is not the actual system, but it will show you a practical plan for growing a live customer in your portfolio. This snapshot will give you a diagnostic, analysis, and an actual growth plan for where you currently sit across two of the seven Domains: Relationships and Competitiveness.