3 Steps to Blowing Up Your Business Firing 20 percent of your sales team really motivates the remaining 80 percent.

All businesses are built on sales. Selling is to an organization what food, water and oxygen are to the body. Take time to learn the mechanics and true art of selling and you'll be a millionaire. Despite the myth, no one is "born a salesman." I am an expert in sales, but trust me I was not born a salesperson. This is why you must take every opportunity you have to learn the art of selling.

My good friend and business partner Victor Antonio spoke on selling at 10XGrowthCon discussing three steps you should be aware of to blow your business up:

Victor Antonio: "When I moved into selling, they gave me a territory and I still remember the conversation with the president. He said, "Victor, I'm putting you in charge of the territory, and this territory has never made more than $14 million. Whatever you do, do not sell less than $14 million.' That was the mandate. So, I had to go to work. What did I do?

Related: 5 Ways to Keep Your Sales Teams Motivated This Summer

Step 1: The Assessment

First I analyzed the territory. I looked at my territory for 90 days. I traveled with salespeople, went with them on their meetings, basically watched their presentation. And what was I looking for? Were they meeting with decision makers, yes or no? Were they positioning the value, as opposed to selling price? At the end of 90 days, I had to make a decision. I had good clay and bad clay.

When you study your salespeople for 90 days, it shouldn't even take that long. You could probably figure out who were the best salespeople within the first 30 minutes. But I spent 90 days with these salespeople and I had three categories. There were people who were exceptional, 20 percent of my salespeople were exceptional. Then at the other extreme, I had 20 percent of the people who simply didn't know how to sell, who were what I call "bad clay." What did I do with those? I fired them.

What I typically find out is 20 percent of salespeople are great and 20 percent are not that good, so get rid of them. But right in the middle, if there are people who are good clay -- that are on the bubble -- then all you need to do is train them.

Related: 7 Must-Know Tips for Managing Your Millennial Sales Team

Step 2: Mark Territory.

One of the things that wasn't happening is that we had not basically segmented the market. And what I did is immediately I started marking the territory. I split the region into seven territories. Why was this important? Because here's what I found out, salespeople were flying across regions, trying to sell something, instead of selling locally, which drove up my cost.

It was also causing conflict with my sales team, because people are going into their backyards to sell something they shouldn't have sold. Also, the customers were confused because two to three salespeople would actually visit them from the same company. If you're not marking your territory, if you don't give them a territory, they're confused. Remember, "Clarity breeds confidence.' This is the whole thing about eating an elephant whole, you can't do it. So, segment your market, mark your territory.

Related: The 4 Essentials for Retaining and Motivating Your Direct Sales Force

Step 3: Define Your Verticals

If you have your territories marked out, now the real key is how much money are in the vertical segments of these territories? How do you size your revenue?

Let's pretend for a moment you're selling a software system and it's a payroll software system. If you're selling software, then you might want to go after healthcare providers. So maybe a vertical would be dentist. Maybe another one would be chiropractors. Then grid everything out. What do I mean by that?

I looked at each vertical market, looked at each segment and say "What is the revenue potential in those markets?'I want to give you a simple formula for sizing your market. Look at the number of opportunities in your market. Multiply it by the win rate and then the average deal size.

This is how you can scale your business -- figure out your revenues by finding the number of opportunities in your area, multiply it by the win rate and multiply that by the actual deal size. You can then size the region.

Let's pretend for a moment that there are 250 dentists in your territory of Miami. I would write down 250. If you believe that you can close 10 percent of those deals and your average deal size is $20,000 then you know you have a $500,000 market.

You've got your territories, you've got your verticals, now you have to make a key decision. How do you get the business? Anything that has a million dollars, scale it…because if there's a million dollars potential revenue, you should hire a direct salesperson."

Victor gives a great overview there of what you need to do to blow your business up. Much more will be talked about at the next 10XGrowthCon where we will look to take you and your business to the next level.