It is difficult to admit, but we, salespeople, are all addicts. It’s not a substance abuse problem that we suffer from. It is instead “hopium” that has a hold on our industry. What is hopium? Hopium is holding on to a bad opportunity for weeks, sometimes months on end, hoping that a miracle will happen at some point in the future so that the opportunity will get “Closed Won”. In this keynote, I shed some more light on how our brains work so that we can understand why we have an addiction to hopium and how it affects the decision making process of sales professionals. Secondly, I present a practical framework that can be used to diagnose and measure the severity of a hopium addiction in any sales rep, team or company.

1. Dimitar Stanimiroff
CEO
@Stanimiroff
Why Salespeople are addicted to “Hopium”

2. Once we own something we
irrationally overvalue it, regardless
of its objective value.
The Endowment Effect

3. ?
The Endowment Effect

4. ?
The Endowment Effect
$7.12!

5. ?
The Endowment Effect
$2.87!
$7.12!

6. What about my Sales Performance?

7. What about my Sales Performance?
Won
Lost
0 200 400 600 800
frequency
days until closing
0.014
0.012
0.010
0.008
0.006
0.004
0.002
0.000

8. What about my Sales Performance?
Won
Lost
0 200 400 600 800
logamount
days until closing
12
10
8
6
4
0

9. How do we fix this?

10. Start tracking not only your average TTW, but also your average TTL
How do we fix this?

11. Start tracking not only your average TTW, but also your average TTL
Use these to calculate your reps’ and/or your team’s EM (TTL / TTW)
How do we fix this?

12. Start tracking not only your average TTW, but also your average TTL
Use these to calculate your reps’ and/or your team’s EM (TTL / TTW)
Use your EM to diagnose dead deals - any opportunity that has been live
longer than 2.7 times a rep’s average time to close is clinically dead!
How do we fix this?

13. Start tracking not only your average TTW, but also your average TTL
Use these to calculate your reps’ and/or your team’s EM (TTL / TTW)
Use your EM to diagnose dead deals - any opportunity that has been live
longer than 2.7 times a rep’s average time to close is clinically dead!
Dead opportunities should not be counted towards a rep’s forecast and
ideally marked Closed Lost, so the pipeline doesn’t get clogged up
How do we fix this?

14. heresy.io/diagnose
A free tool to assess the health
of your pipeline