Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.
You know the quote from the bible, "and the meek shall inherit the earth"? Well I think it applies to many top salespeople that are not also top producers. I'll explain.
A top producer helps the company grow by finding and closing new business while a top salesperson often lives off of business that has already been brought into the company, many times, not even by the salesperson that currently owns it. You can call it residual, reorders, repeat, call-ins, contract or ongoing business, it is still the same - the salesperson as account manager - and probably a good one - but still account manager. Or you can call it major accounts, national accounts, global accounts, or key accounts but it's still the same - account manager. Both are way different than producers.
When top management is unable or unwilling to recognize the difference between top producers and their good account managers, mistakenly believing that their good account managers are also good salespeople, the company is probably not experiencing very strong growth.
And many of those good account managers who are mistakenly called top salespeople are, well, meek. We have the data to prove it! And so, the meek shall inherit the best accounts brought in by the top producers. Hardly seems fair.
(c) Copyright 2009 Dave Kurlan
