Our Story

In his younger days, Derek had told himself that the lack of success with those salespeople who had never improved – despite all that best-you-can-buy training – must be his own lack of experience with the material. But after 20 years had passed, he knew better. And he had begun to identify patterns:

Sales training rarely improved performance in a lasting way; any improvement was short-lived and for only some of the salespeople, some of the time. Sales training also utterly failed with other people. Some people, it seemed, could not be trained to be any better no matter how great the effort, or how good the training material.

There was no reliable hiring process. Derek had himself interviewed and hired hundreds of salespeople, and also participated in many hundreds more alongside colleagues. An alarming number of his candidates who impressed during interviews went on to fail dismally, and an even more alarming number who did not particularly impress during interviews went on to break sales records.

Many known top performers, hired away from competitors, did not continue their impressive performance after changing companies. What in the new environment caused this?

The best salespeople did things their own way, ignoring the company-taught methodology. Strangely, this made them “tolerated rebels”, as management had no idea how to manage them, but welcomed their numbers.

Promoting top salespeople to Sales Managers rarely achieved the desired result. The best managers – those who everyone loved, respected and eagerly followed – were not necessarily top performers themselves. What was it about these managers that made salespeople want to give them their absolute best?

Over the years Derek scoured the market for ideas and practices that did work, in an effort to raise all salespeople to a high-performing level, and he came to realize that the answers would not be found in the sales realm, but in the study of human behavior. This acknowledgement was a game-changer.

He learned which behaviors human beings are capable of learning and repeating, and which behaviors are not. He learned about natural-born talent and the futility of trying to teach innate talent to others.

He learned about behavior analysis, performance conditions, and the truth about motivation. He learned that far and away the most impacting influence on an employee’s productivity is the immediate manager, and what the best managers do so differently.

During this time, between 1993 and 1999, Derek also conducted detailed interviews with over 2,000 business owners and executives, in companies of all sizes and across all industries, discussing successful sales practices and challenges.

The culmination of all of this research, observation and finally, implementation presented to Derek what he would ultimately choose to focus on: top performers. He had discovered that top performers did not simply out-perform their average counterparts; they blew them out of the water. Derek measured that top performers sell four times more than their average counterparts do.

He also discovered that top performers are a unique breed. They are wired differently and they require different things than average salespeople do, in terms of environment, support and management. And yet, it was no extra trouble or effort to manage such a sales team – just different.

The results were immediately positive. During these years Derek implemented all of his findings with the sales teams in his charge, and the resulting productivity increases were obvious and consistent. It was time to test on someone else.

Derek opened Strat-e G Group (worst name ever) in 2000 in his native Montreal and over the next six years introduced his system to a total of 36 companies. Derek would perfect the implementation process during these years, as he and his four “Site Managers” coached the 6 Best Practices into place over a period of time.

The success of this new system inspired The Perfect SalesForce: The 6 Best Practices of the World’s Best Sales Teams, published by Penguin Publishing in 2007. Since then, thousands of owners and managers have benefited from this new way to hire, pay, train, motivate and manage their salespeople.

Since the book’s release, Derek has consulted with the likes of Investors Group, IBM and Marriott, but he is the first to admit it’s the smaller companies that get him up in the morning.

“Most people who manage salespeople day to day have no idea what they’re doing, and that’s not only frustrating for them, it’s extremely costly. Without meaning to, and often with the absolute best of intentions, most of them are actually sabotaging performance.”

Today The Perfect SalesForce has 8 Senior Advisors, overseen by Derek Gatehouse, who work with companies of all sizes and in all industries to usher in the 6 practices that will transform any sales team into a Perfect SalesForce.