COMMENTS
While you posed and answered a legitimate question, why is so much attention given to the sales person when they are simply a reflection of the leadership and management acumen of those in sales management? Sales management should be accountable for hiring and training sales folks, but our research shows that though sales managers believe talent identification and acquisition has the biggest impact on sales productivity, 57% rate themselves or their management teams as neutral to very weak at this skill (talent id and acquisition). Until the managers "get it", companies like OMG and EcSELL won't be able to positively affect as many lives.
Dave--I love your science based approach, but what % of the managers are not trainable? They need to be reassigned prior to sales associates.
Bill Eckstrom
@Bill - thanks for pointing out the real problem.
The percentage of managers that aren't trainable isn't much different than the 21% for salespeople but, the percentage of sales managers who shouldn't be in sales management is nearly double that of those who shouldn't be in sales..
On the subject of talent identification, or selection, it's not so much their inability to identify talent, as it is their refusal to follow a best practice process, use objective criteria, be guided by truly predictive sales specific assessments, and then on board and develop instead of setting them up for failure.
AS I mentioed in my note the Harvard Business Review had an interesting article in their March issue on provocative selling.Having articulated the stats on the sales people and taking up Bills point is there sdome further stats on Sales Management failings that by comparison would make pulling teeth out quite a pleasant experience?
Having been a sales engineer for many years, I have to agree that a fairly large percentage of salespeople should find other work. But I am not certain if sales attainment should be the sole measure of success, unless it is measured over a fairly long time. Because sales is such a revolving door at so many companies, I would think the junior folks would often fall at the lower end of your scale. What happens when you break it out by seniority?
@Dave - good question! There are about 450,000 salespeople in our data and 90% have been in sales more than 2 years and more than half have been in sales for more than 10 years...
@Dave - I don't doubt the validity of your data. But my question was if you see a difference when you break out the numbers by seniority? Are people who have been in sales for 10 years more likely to be "very strong"?
@Dave - sorry - no. We see no correlation between length of time in sales and the strength/effectiveness of a salesperson.
@Dave Kurlan - Well that certainly makes a strong argument for proper sales recruiting. If reps that have been in the business for 10 years can still suck it must be because they are moving from company to company. Although companies probably keep lousy sales reps for a while, I can't imagine anyone getting to stick around for ten years if they consistently can't make quota. So that means they move from one company to the next: there is a sucker manager born every minute!