A survey of British businesses found that fraud, money laundering, and embezzlement cost them over £40 billion ( $72 billion) a year. The average loss of companies surveyed was over £1 million, whereas loss to top 100 companies (those in FTSE 100 index) was £5 million. Companies were reporting losses of up to 5% of turnover.

The significant fact about these figures was that this was only what had been detected. The real losses are certainly many many times greater. And to make matters worse these figures almost entirely represent what is ‘inside’ crime. That is, it is crime committed by employees or by outside temporary staff contracted at time to company.

And furthermore, a large number of companies had no insurance cover to protect them from consequences of this type of activity.

So what are lessons to be learned?

1. Don’t imagine that it can’t happen to your company.

It can happen, and most probably will. The bigger your company, greater is scope for undetected crime against it.

2. Consider your vulnerabilities.

Jonathan owns a computer hardware store that turns over more than $10 million a year in sales. But Jonathan is worried. Business is good, but he has one major problem. Two of his team of ten salespeople, Paul and Richie, account for close to 80 percent of his business's total sales.

The other eight scratch around for 'crumbs' and are continuously being replaced. Jonathan is worried that if he were to lose his two best sales people, it would place huge pressure on his business.

"So what's their (Jonathan's top salespeople's) secret?" , I ask. "I don't know. They have a way with customers. They always know right thing to say in order to make a sale. I guess you could say that they're just born salesmen..", replies Jonathan.

As far as I'm aware, scientists are yet to discover genetic code for "born salespeople". In other words, great sales people are made, not born. Whilst some individuals appear to be born with great sales talent, such talent is more likely result of sales development, rather than genetics.

Success leaves clues. In just about any organisation that you visit, you will find outstanding salespeople continuously using sales systems and procedures that enable them to ride at top of sales pack.

I explain to Jonathan that if we are to massively increase sales performance of each team member, we need to be able to uncover those systems and patterns of successful sales behavior amongst his best salespeople, and then to systematize such behavior amongst all sales staff.

That way, not only will Jonathan will be able to improve overall sales performance amongst all team members, he will also be creating a business that is systems dependent, rather than people dependent.

Jonathan and I spend a full day observing and analyzing activities of Jonathan's sales "stars" and sales "underperformers". As predicted, there were definite patterns and systems employed by star performers that others failed to implement.