hiring sales candidates

94% of sales managers are optimistic about their salespeople.  That’s a very surprising statistic for a couple of reasons:

50% or more of their salespeople won’t hit their quotas this year and haven’t since at least 2008.
Objective Management Group’s (OMG’s) findings from the evaluations and assessments of salespeople show that 50% of all salespeople are weak.

Sales managers believe that 50% of their salespeople are good and 44% of their salespeople have potential.  Of course, they are using subjective, rather than objective approaches to measuring what “good” is.

How do you measure good?

Salespeople consistently meet or exceed quota or expectations
You like your salespeople, they work hard, don’t give you any trouble, are positive, don’t miss quota by too much, sometimes bring in good customers, are advocates of the company and brand, and are good influences, etc.

Unfortunately, a lot of sales managers choose the second option.

Why? Many sales managers aren’t very good at what they do!  Only 10% of all sales managers are effective at  both coaching and coaching consistently and when it comes to holding salespeople accountable, they aren’t much better.  Review the table below: