The OK Plateau: Why Average Rural Sales Reps Stop Improving

Most rural sales reps eventually hit what I call the OK Plateau.

They do just enough to justify their salary, keep their sales manager off their back and stay comfortably employed.

They aren’t failing.

But they aren’t really pushing themselves either.

And this is where many rural sales teams get stuck.

The Comfortable Plateau

Sales managers often ask me, usually in frustration:

“Why can’t I get more out of my salespeople?”

My answer is usually pretty simple.

They’ve reached their comfortable plateau.

They’ve discovered the level of effort and performance they need to maintain to stay out of trouble, and they don’t see enough reason to push beyond it.

The risk feels greater than the reward.

But the best salespeople are different.

They keep pushing.

They don’t see difficulty as something to avoid. They see it as an opportunity to improve.

That’s an important distinction.

Difficulty Makes You Better

There is an interesting lesson from sport that applies directly to sales.

Research into baseball training has looked at what happens when batters face predictable pitches compared with more varied and unpredictable pitches.

Hitting a baseball is already incredibly difficult. A batter has a fraction of a second to decide what is coming and how to respond.

If you continually practise the same response to the same type of pitch, you can become very good at that particular situation.

But introduce variety and unpredictability and the brain has to work harder.

It has to retrieve the right skill, make a decision and adapt.

That is where deeper learning happens.

The improvement may be slower at first, but the skill becomes more adaptable and durable.

The same principle applies to sales.

If you only practise the sales conversations you’re already comfortable having, you can become a one-trick pony.

You might be brilliant at selling to one type of customer, handling one type of objection or presenting one particular product.

But what happens when the customer throws something completely different at you?

That’s when you discover whether you have actually mastered the skill or simply memorised a response.

Don’t Create One-Trick Salespeople

Aircraft simulators work on a similar principle.

Pilots don’t simply practise flying in perfect conditions.

They are exposed to different scenarios, including situations they may not expect, so they have to think, respond and make decisions under pressure.

If pilots knew exactly what was coming every time, they could develop a false sense of mastery.

Salespeople can do exactly the same thing.

If every role-play is predictable, every sales meeting follows the same format and every objection is something they’ve already rehearsed, they may feel confident without actually becoming more capable.

The goal isn’t to make sales easier.

The goal is to make your salesperson better at handling whatever happens next.

The Harder It Is, The Better It Can Be

This is why I believe the best rural salespeople deliberately do things that are uncomfortable.

They:

• Train continually, as though their livelihood depends on it.
• Create more content than they consume.
• Become lifelong learners.
• Look after themselves so they have the energy others don’t.
• Read the books others won’t.
• Debrief properly when they lose.
• Role-play and rehearse regularly.
• Attack their competitors’ greatest strengths.
• Deliberately put themselves into difficult sales situations.

These aren’t necessarily easy things to do.

That’s the point.

Your competitors are unlikely to do the things they find difficult either.

And that’s where your competitive advantage starts.

Don’t Get Comfortable

When something is hard and you do it anyway, you can almost guarantee that somebody else isn’t.

That’s how you create distance between yourself and the competition.

Don’t become comfortable with being “OK.”

Don’t confuse experience with mastery.

Don’t let your rural sales team become so comfortable that they stop learning.

Create challenges that force them to think.

Expose them to different scenarios.

Make them retrieve what they’ve learned.

Challenge their assumptions.

Role-play the conversations they don’t want to have.

Debrief the deals they lose.

Then do it again.

Because when the environment gets harder and you rise to the challenge, your competitors may not.

That’s what separates the exceptional from the average.

The harder it is, the better it can make you.

Ready to Build a Stronger Rural Sales Team?

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