Some of my long-term problems had such simple solutions. If only I had thought of the obvious solutions first.  For example:

For decades, I could not drive for much longer than two to two and a half hours before my eyes would get so heavy that I risked falling asleep at the wheel.  Day or night, year after year, all of our trips were based on how far I might have to drive.  And then I discovered the solution.  Sunglasses.  Yup, with prescription sunglasses, my driving fatigue became a thing of the past and I can drive for hours and hours without getting sleepy.

For months, I had a bright red rash that would continue to reappear under my arms.  While a prescription ointment would help it disappear after about a week, it would continue to reappear.  And then I discovered the solution.  Anti-perspirant.  Yup, all I had to do was to switch from a deodorant to an anti-perspirant and voila, no more rash, ever.

For the last six months I had an acute eczema breakout in, on and behind my ears.  It was really bad, and included burning and itching and flaking.   I used 2 different prescriptions, Neosporin, Eczema creams, honey, balms, coconut oil and anything I could find.  Nothing worked.  Then I tried Aquaphor Advanced Healing Ointment and in three days it was cleared.

Are you getting the picture.  Nothing worked and then sunglasses, anti-perspirant and Aquaphor.  Simple, easy, fast, and powerful.

There are simple, easy, fast and powerful solutions for sales problems too.  See my examples below.

Not enough new meetings?  There four possible reasons and fairly obvious solutions:

1. Salespeople aren't prospecting as required because they have call reluctance.  Hire hunters.  Hoping for change isn't a viable strategy.
2. Salespeople aren't prospecting as required because sales managers are not holding them accountable.  Hold your Sales Managers accountable for holding their salespeople accountable to agreed upon KPIs.  Make it a condition of continued employment.
3. Salespeople are prospecting but their messaging is awful. Have an expert change or tweak the messaging for prospecting calls.
4. Salespeople are prospecting, have good call messaging, but they sound awful or are not being well received.  They won't improve unless you have them trained on cold-call delivery.

Opportunities getting stuck in the pipeline?  There are five possible reasons and some obvious solutions:

1. Salespeople are not reaching decision makers.  Opportunities are 341% more likely to get stuck if your salespeople aren't talking with decision makers.  Get them trained on how to reach decision makers.
2. Lack of urgency.  Salespeople are not uncovering compelling reasons to buy, preventing them from reaching decision makers, getting money approved, and moving the opportunity forward.  Get your salespeople trained on how to take a consultative approach and get your sales managers trained on how to coach up your salespeople.
3. Not being the value.  If prospects don't perceive they are receiving value from a salesperson, they have no reason to move forward with the salesperson.  This isn't talking about value, explaining the value proposition or adding value to your solutions, this is the salesperson being the value.  Get your salespeople trained on how to be the value.  
4. Salespeople are not following an optimized, staged, milestone-centric, customer-focused sales process.  Have this process created and get the sales team trained on how to execute it.
5. Not thoroughly qualifying their opportunities, causing inappropriate quotes, proposals and presentations.  Get your salespeople trained on how to thoroughly qualify and hold your sales managers accountable for holding salespeople accountable to justify every proposal or quote. 

Salespeople are under-performing and not hitting quota. There are an unlimited number of possible reasons, from poor selection, to ineffective or non-existent on boarding, to low Sales DNA, to skill gaps, to lack of motivation, lack of direction, lack of support, lack of training, lack of or ineffective coaching, and on and on and on.  Here are a couple of obvious solutions:

1. Have the sales team evaluated and get the data so that you know for sure if your under-performers can be trained and/or coached up or if what you see is what you will continue to get.  If they are part of your past but not part of your future, replace them today.  If they are part of your future, get them sales training.  You'll also need to learn whether their performance or lack thereof, is self-inflicted or enabled by ineffective sales management.  Learn more here.
2. Give them an ultimatum but consider the length of the sales cycle.  So many companies give salespeople 30 - 60 days to turn things around but if you have an 8 month sales cycle then you either need to give them 8-12 months, or tie the improvement to KPIs that are within reach of 30-60 days.
   
   

There isn't a single scenario going on with your sales team that we haven't seen, addressed, and solved in the past 37 years.  It doesn't matter how small or large your team is, what industry you are in, which markets you sell to, what your price points are, how long you've been in business, how well-known you are, or what your challenges are.  Some companies make the mistake of accepting and being resigned to these challenges, preventing them from getting solutions.  These are the steps you must take to solve your problems:

1. Acknowledge the problems 
2. Choose to take action
3. Get outside expertise
4. Pull the trigger

Image created by AI from 123RF

My wife chose some beautiful new shrubs and flowers and I was digging the holes to plant them in the garden.  The largest shrub required the largest hole and it was to be placed in an area of the garden that I knew was quite rocky.  Sure enough, after just three shovel fulls of dirt, I hit rock and it was bigger than both my shovel and the hole.  I was stuck.  Short of finding a new location or bringing in a Bobcat to excavate,  I need to figure out how to get unstuck.

The same thing happens to salespeople with their sales opportunities.  It looks good (shrub), they start digging (discovery call) and before long it's stuck in the pipeline (rock).  But unlike huge rocks in small holes, we don't have to be derailed by stuck sales opportunities.  As a matter of fact, I'll be joined by two senior sales experts at Kurlan & Associates as we explain why your opportunities get stuck, and what you can do about it.

When: Thursday, May 25, 2023 at 11am Eastern Time 

Where: Live Zoom Broadcast.

Register: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/2616818266468/WN_wGzsnkZJRMWVbKiLw36iLw 

Who Should Attend: CEOs, CSOs, CROs, Sales VPs and Directors, National, Regional and Local Sales Managers, Salespeople, Sales Enablement VPs, Learning & Development VPs.

Why You Should Attend:  In less than 30 minutes, you'll understand exactly why opportunities get stuck and what you can do to prevent that from happening going forward.  What could be easier?

We hope to see you there!

Image copyright 123 RF Copyright:

My wife and I were on a Mother's Day walk when we saw something I had never seen before.  I should have snapped a picture but I didn't, and could not find a single picture on the internet that captured what we saw.  So I went to Neural.Love and used AI to create the image above. The waterfall and lagoon the site added to the image was nice a bonus!

Looking at the mountain in front of us, the lower third was bright and vibrant green, with full-sized leaves on the trees.  The middle third was a duller, lighter green with new, young, and still growing leaves on its trees.  The top third of the mountain was brown, high enough in elevation that the leaves had not yet popped.  To make the mid-May look even more mystical, there was a slight haze covering the browner, top third.

The sight was very nice to look at but regular readers know that it could only be an analogy for something sales related.

Three things came to me at once.  The Hot and Cold Game came first because the colors on the mountain had to do with temperatures and in this case, hot, warm, and cold.  For some reason, Sales Process came next and I combined the three thoughts.

There is a correlation between sales process and sales success.  I once estimated that when a sales team did not have a company-wide sales process that their sales team followed, and such a process was created, optimized and executed, a 25% increase in sales followed.  Today I dug through Objective Management Group (OMG) data and will share my insights below but first, let's review the attributes measured within OMG's Sales Process competency.

Here is what I found:

Only 35% of all salespeople have the core competency Sales Process as a strength (greater than 66). 

Filtering by Sales Percentile, 82% of the top salespeople and 5% of the worst salespeople have Sales Process as a strength. The best salespeople are 1640% stronger at Sales Process than the worst salespeople. 

An alternate way to look at the Sales Process core competency is through average scores.  The worst salespeople (bottom 10%) score only 21% on Sales Process while the best salespeople (top 5%) score 77%.  The average score for all salespeople is 49%, eerily similar to the percentage of salespeople that hit quota in 2022.  The best salespeople score 367% better!

I also analyzed performance data and after filtering on salespeople who were not performing (below 80% of quota), only 4% were strong in the Sales Process competency.  The opposite of that analysis revealed that of those who were performing, 85% were strong in the Sales Process competency.  Salespeople who are strong in Sales Process are 2125% more likely to be performers.  That is very strong correlation!

Companies and their salespeople who are closely aligned and following the sales process are hot and green.

Companies and their salespeople who are not as closely aligned but still following the sales process to some degree are warm and light green.

Companies and their salespeople who are not closely aligned with or following the sales process are cold and brown.

Another way of putting this is that if you don't currently have a consistently effective, staged, milestone-centric, customer-focused sales process in place, you are probably being frozen out from winning some opportunities.  If you do have a sales process like that in place, your salespeople are probably on fire, winning the lion's share of opportunities.

Light a fire under sales process!

The Sales Process competency is just one of 21 Sales Core Competencies measured by OMG.  See all 21 here.

 

All the requirements have been met.

We have already seen these factors occur across the board:

• Low QoQ GDP. 
• High interest rates. 
• Massive layoffs.
• Inflation.
• Stock Market down.
• Cost-cutting. 

We are now seeing these events in sales organizations:

• Missed forecasts. 
• Closing delays. 
• Failure to hit quotas.
• Order cancellations.  

We know what doesn't work in a recession. 

The economic crisis of 2008-9, and the Covid lockdowns of 2020-2021 showed us that when companies focus on cost-cutting instead of growing revenue, revenue declines - sharply.  Who would have guessed that smart people wouldn't see that coming?

You know what to do when dry weather conditions aren't favorable for growing trees, flowers, and shrubs. You don't pull the plants out of the ground or let them succumb to the dry conditions.  You add water. It's a very simple concept.

Can companies add water to grow revenue when the economic conditions are evaporating?  Yes, but it's counter-intuitive.

Instead of laying off salespeople, hire salespeople.  Instead of discounting, get better at selling value.  Instead of getting more transactional on more opportunities, target more effectively and be more consultative. And instead of calling on anyone who will speak with you, call on the people with the authority to spend money during a spending freeze, and with you instead of a lower priced competitor. It's easy for me to say but I've personally seen, orchestrated, and executed those philosophies, in desperate times, to achieve revenue growth instead of revenue loss.

Let's discuss the concept of hiring salespeople when the knee-jerk reaction is to lay-off, fire or initiate a hiring freeze.  Only CFOs would see the addition of salespeople as an expense to be cut.  Anyone who knows how a company's economic engine works, knows that if you pay a salesperson $150,000 and they generate $1 million at a 40% margin, the company will get a return of $250,000 on their investment.  What's not to like?  Even if they generate only half that much their first year, that is still 20% better than break-even.  Why wouldn't you do this?

Even more intriguing is the fact that the current economic conditions have flipped the sales candidate market on its head.  Anyone who has been actively looking for salespeople knows that there has been an acute shortage of good salespeople in the job market, and those who were out there were more passive than aggressive.  They were looking but not biting, nibbling but not following through, interviewing but turning down offers, or hired and not showing up for their first day of work.  It sucked.

But today, sales candidates are being much more aggressive, acting with conviction, willing to change jobs, looking for more security, and doing whatever it takes to secure an interview, even if it means taking the time to complete an online application and a 45-minute sales candidate assessment.  That's great news for companies that want to grow revenue right now and into 2024.

But it can't be any salesperson who is willing to accept your offer.  As I mentioned earlier in this article, the new salespeople you attract, assess and hire must be able to sell value over price and sell consultatively to decision makers instead of transactionally to underlings.  If you are using Objective Management Group's (OMG) Sales Candidate Assessments, it means that as few as one in six candidates will be recommended because that's how few salespeople there are who can take those two approaches, executive effectively, and meet the requirements for what it takes to succeed at your company in this particular selling role.  It also means that the one in six will be a rock star.  OMG's accuracy is legendary and its predictive validity is around 90%.  More specifically, the data over the last fifteen years shows that candidates who are not recommended, but get hired, fail inside of six months.  The data also shows that 92% of salespeople who are recommended and hired rise to the top half of their sales teams within one year.  And the latest data shows that 100% of the recommended salespeople that were hired were still working for the company one year later!

Plants that don't get enough water, fail to flower, don't produce fruit, don't grow and eventually die.

Sales organizations that don't improve through better selection and hiring, first-class sales leadership, and top-notch training and coaching, fail to hit numbers, don't grow revenue, and cause far-reaching ripple effects into the company, often having an impact on Private Equity firms, Wall Street, and investors.

If you are a CEO, take this article to heart and hire stronger salespeople today.

If you are a Sales Leader or HR director, take this article to your CEO and get buy-in today!

If you are a salesperson, take this article to your Sales Leader and they'll know what to do.

See a sample OMG Sales Candidate Assessment.

Get a free trial of an OMG Sales Candidate Assessment.

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The landscaper called me over to look at a tree on our property.  He showed me the enormous hole and I asked, "What did that?"

"Woodpecker," he said.

On one side of the tree we had this perfectly cut, huge hole, and the other side of the tree had many small holes.  I learned that the Woodpecker that made the small holes were looking for food while the Woodpecker that made the huge hole was making a home.  Hunters and Farmers. 

                                                 

Just like the two types of Woodpeckers, salespeople tend to fall into the same two categories of being either Hunters or Farmers.  In a perfect world, Hunters make lots of outgoing calls in order to find an opportunity which could pay them to eat.  Farmers work a single account and try to make them bigger.

Other than predators, there isn't much to stop a woodpecker from doing their thing, but there are plenty of things that could interfere with a salesperson's Hunting or Farming efforts.  Let's discuss them.

Let's begin with the Hunters. While many tech companies have adopted the use of BDRs to conduct inbound and outbound prospecting, most companies in most industries did not go there.  So let's assume that we are talking about a traditional sales organization with traditional salespeople who have responsibility for both finding and selling opportunities. If the salesperson already works at your company, you know if they are hunting because those who hunt consistently regularly add new opportunities to the pipeline. But what about the salespeople who don't hunt consistently.  Do you know why? The seven reasons most often to blame are:

• Sales Managers.  What?  Yes, sales managers who fail to hold their salespeople accountable for the agreed upon prospecting activities are enabling those non-hunting salespeople.
• Fear of Rejection - they fear that a prospect will say, "No," or "Not Interested," and that will destroy them
• Need to be Liked - they believe that if they interrupt a prospect and the prospect becomes upset, the prospect won't like them.
• Call Reluctance - they refuse to make cold calls.
• Perfectionist - they won't make the calls until they are sure the calls will be perfect but, of course, there is no such thing as a perfect call.
• Time Management - they have time for everything except making prospecting calls
• Nobody Answers the Phone - a nice excuse since it can take anywhere from 8-15 attempts to reach a decision maker and most salespeople give up after 4 attempts.

If the salesperson does not work for you - yet - but they are candidates for a sales role that requires Hunting, you need a crystal ball.  In this case, you aren't as concerned with why they might not hunt, you must know, in advance, if they WILL hunt.

In both scenarios, one of the assessments from Objective Management Group (OMG) can help.  For your existing salespeople, a sales team evaluation will help you understand if you can get your non-hunting salespeople to become hunters.  For potential salespeople, OMG's Sales Candidate Assessment will tell you whether or not they WILL prospect consistently and you can take that prediction to the bank as no assessment is as accurate and predictive as OMG's Sales Candidate Assessments.

According to OMG's data from the evaluations and assessments of more than 2.3 million salespeople, 68% of salespeople are strong in the Hunter Competency.  But don't rejoice just yet.  If we look more closely, we see that 95% of the top 10% of all salespeople are strong Hunters so what does that mean for the rest?  If we look at the bottom 50% - half of your current and potential future salespeople - only 34% are strong Hunters and that drops to just 6% of the bottom 10%.  Ugh.

Thankfully, OMG measures more than the Hunting competency as that is only one of the twenty-one Sales Core Competencies featured in OMG's various evaluation tools.

The other type of salesperson we were discussing earlier in the article is the Farmer.  While more salespeople tend to be attracted to the Farmer role than the Hunter role, attraction does not equal well-suited.  There are several reasons why salespeople in Farmer roles fail to significantly grow their large accounts:

• Unable to reach decision makers so those in power are unfamiliar with the salesperson.
• Unable to penetrate the account both vertically and horizontally resulting in lost opportunities
• Unable to provide value because of a focus on pricing
• Order-taking vs account growth mentality
• Risk averse so they focus on not losing the account rather than growing the account
• Lack of strong relationships across the account so when a key individual leaves the account is vulnerable
• Faulty sense of loyalty where they advocate for their customer instead of for their company

The next time you are in your yard you might hear a woodpecker but you probably won't see it.  Is the Woodpecker hunting or farming, and does that even matter?  There's not much you can do about it anyway.  However, at your company, there is a lot you can do.  Get your sales team evaluated so you can identify why your sales team isn't more effective and what you can do to train and coach them up.  Utilize OMG's Sales Candidate Assessments to improve your sales selection.  Your salespeople don't have to be Woodpeckers!

Check out all 21 Sales Core Competencies, comparison data by industry, and even how your salespeople compare here.

Take OMG's Sales Candidate Assessments for a free trial here.

Check out OMG's Sales Team Evaluation Samples here.

Our son's college baseball season is winding down and we think they'll make the playoffs for the second straight year.  As I think back to high-school baseball, a couple of things came to mind that have a lot to do with sales development.

Mike attended two high schools.  His first high school baseball coach saw his potential, calling him up to play on the varsity team when he was still in the 8th grade. He was a starter that year, as well as his freshman and sophomore years.  Coach Mark was a good judge of talent, he was able to develop the limited talent he had, and his players loved him.  RIP Mark.

Mike transferred to a bigger, more sports-oriented high school for his junior and senior years where he had only 8 at-bats as a junior and lost his senior year to Covid. Coach Charlie was a poor judge of talent, as evidenced by his reputation for cutting guys who would later be drafted by MLB teams. He was unable to develop the talent he had and his players disliked playing for him.

Those two examples are not unique to baseball as I'm sure you could share similar stories from football, soccer, hockey, lacrosse, volleyball, tennis, swimming and basketball coaches.  More important for today's topic, the two baseball coaches are analogous to most of the Sales Managers I have worked with over the past 3 decades. 

There are a small percentage of sales managers who are good judges of talent, make smart hiring decisions, their salespeople love working WITH them, and as a result, these sales managers are able to coach the ever-living daylights out of their salespeople and get them to over-achieve.

A very large percentage of sales managers are poor judges of talent, make poor hiring decisions, and are unable to coach up the very salespeople who shouldn't have been hired.  They have underperforming teams and often close the gap by focusing on their personal sales instead of their salespeople.

Sports teams hold tryouts.  They're not perfect, but they do serve as auditions and while some athletes perform better in games than in tryouts, most good coaches know what to look for.  

Sales Managers don't hold tryouts.  They use resumes and interviews, neither of which are predictive of success, and hire based on gut instinct.  For example, take Joe, a top salesperson at his previous company in industrial manufacturing. Joe managed the three largest accounts there and his revenue dwarfed the other salespeople in the company.  Joe is applying for a similar role at with a competitor and Larry, the sales manager there, is very excited about Joe.  What Larry doesn't realize, is that those three large accounts are staying with Joe's previous company because Joe doesn't build great relationships, and will fail to bring in new accounts because he is not a hunter.  Oblivious to Joe's weaknesses in these two competencies, Larry will hire Joe and then never understand why Joe is failing.  If only there was a way for Larry to know about those two challenges in advance!

Of course, there is.  Larry can't hold tryouts, but he could do the second best thing and use Objective Management Group's (OMG's) Sales Candidate Assessments.  They are customizable for each selling role, extremely accurate and have legendary predictive validity.  It's the closest thing to a crystal ball or a tryout.  Check them out here.  OMG measures all 21 Sales Core Competencies and you can see the statistics and average scores for your industry here.

Sales Managers don't have to be victims of their own gut instinct when they can apply science to their sales selection!

As we do each Friday in March and April, my wife and I drove to upstate New York to watch our son's college baseball games.  But this article isn't only about normal, it's also about the abnormal in both baseball and sales.

For miles along I-90 in Western Massachusetts, both on Friday and returning Monday morning, there was only 1 very weak bar of signal on Verizon's wireless network.  Not acceptable and not normal.

The temperature for spring baseball games is usually in the 40's and on nice weekends, the 50's.  It touched 90 degrees for the two games on Saturday and was in the 70's for the two Sunday games.  Very acceptable but not normal.

The leaves were on the trees!  Acceptable but not normal.

Our son had 4 hits on Saturday.  Acceptable but not normal.

I looked at the stats for the nine starters in the Friday night Boston Red Sox game and six of them had batting averages that were not only well below the league average of .243, they were all below .200. Very unacceptable and not normal.

If we look at the capabilities of a typical sales team, failing to meet the CEO's revenue requirements, it would be quite normal for us to see two thirds of the sales team falling significantly below the industry or global averages.   Unlike the statistics used by baseball management and operations and devoured by fans, sales stats comparing sales contributors and sales teams aren't available, preventing Senior Sales Leaders and the C Suite from seeing how their sales team compares with other sales teams in their industry.  At least that's how the thinking goes.  But it's untrue.  Those comparisons are available and have been available.  Objective Management Group (OMG) has those statistics on more than 2.3 million salespeople and thousands of sales teams in 200 industries.  OMG makes that data available and I'll show you where you can see the stats for your industry, and even see how your sales team compares to both the industry norms, as well as the abnormals like the top 10% and bottom 10%.

Most executives review their sales team and determine who the A's, B's and C's are based on revenue.

"Revenue is not, has never been, and never will be an indicator of sales effectiveness. "

Revenue is revenue and Executives have revenue sensitivity. Watch this 3-minute video to better understand what I mean.

Stop using revenue to rank your salespeople or to conclude that your salespeople with the most revenue are good salespeople.  It's fiction.  It's BS.  It's misinformation.  It will lead you to make bad decisions.  Revenue represents what customers spend with you.  Sales effectiveness is the measure of a salesperson's ability to grow revenue by bringing in new business.

OMG measures 21 Sales Core Competencies.  You can see the stats for all 21 competencies for all salespeople here, select your industry to see the industry-specific stats, and begin the process to see those same stats for your sales team.  This is FREE!  After seeing your aggregate scores compared to your industry and the rest of the world, you can optionally receive a variety of detailed reports and files for a fee.

Enjoy!

Image copyright Copyright 123RF

Today, I read two articles that had some quotable copy which we can translate to sales.  The first article is about baseball and I'll translate what it says after the quote I pulled out.

Alex Spier, writing in advance of today's Boston Red Sox season opener, said:

According to Baseball Prospectus, there have been five seasons this century in which the Sox had fewer than two players reach at least a 4-win WAR plateau: 2022, 2020, 2015, 2014, and 2012. A common theme exists for those teams: They all finished last in the AL East.

This year, the Prospectus 50th percentile (midpoint) projections feature nary a Red Sox player reaching 4.0 WAR. Devers (3.8) and Yoshida (3.7) — who received the largest commitments from the Sox this winter — are closest. The team does not have a pitcher whose 50th percentile projection ranks among the top 75; Chris Sale’s 1.4 WAR projection ranks 76th.

They had passionate coaches and teachers but didn’t have a pitching lab focused on pitch design, didn’t have the scale of technology to precisely track everything on the field, didn’t have the specificity of goals in player plans to instruct them on not only what they needed to work on but how they needed to do it.

“We’ve done some internal evaluations, looking at ourselves and how we compare to other teams,” said farm director Brian Abraham. “We want to be the best. And I think this offseason represented us moving toward that direction.”

Explanation for non-baseball readers:

The first two paragraphs basically say that when the Red Sox have fewer than 2 super stars in the lineup, they suck.  In baseball analytics, WAR represents Wins Above a Replacement Player, where a 4-win WAR means that the player helped them to win 4 more games than an average player would have helped them to win.  The third paragraph explained some of the reasons for recent Red Sox last place finishes, while the fourth paragraph speaks to the importance of infrastructure and evaluation.

We could easily say the same things about sales teams.  Let's supposed a sales team has eight salespeople, two sales managers and a Sales VP.  If that sales team has fewer than two great salespeople (think the 80/20 rule), the team as a whole will suck.  Those are the sales teams where 57% or more of their salespeople fail to meet quota.  When a baseball team has only two stars it can be blamed on roster construction.  Similarly, when a sales team has only two great salespeople it can be blamed on sales selection. We can also blame management for not training and developing and coaching those weak salespeople they hired.  You can follow the Red Sox' new philosophy by getting your sales team evaluated to better understand the improvements that must be made.  

Training Industry's newsletter said that "Learning & Development is broken."  They went on to say that:

According to Gallup, “U.S. employee engagement took another step backward during the second quarter of 2022 … The ratio of engaged to actively disengaged employees is now 1.8 to 1, the lowest in almost a decade.” So, what actions can you take as a learning and development (L&D) leader to better support your employees and drive results for your company? All at a time when we’re asked to do more with less?

The sales team is the company's economic engine so if you are to invest in anything in 2023, it must be on your sales team.  You can kill two birds with one stone.  Good quality Sales Training solves the engagement problem and while doing so, you can improve your economic engine at the same time. But, and it's a big but, before you spend a dime on sales training, you must get the team evaluated to objectively understand the real issues, the specific skill gaps contributing those problems, gauge the potential of the sales team, and understand the training that would be required to get them there.  Think MRI prior to surgery and Examination prior to prescription.  

Email me for immediate help getting your sales team evaluated.

In a recent sales team evaluation, our client learned their sales team had fallen significantly behind other sales teams in their industry in the area of sales capabilities. They were wasting opportunities by being overly reliant on imagined relationships, not reaching decision makers, and they believed their technical knowledge was sufficient to differentiate them from the competition. 

It wasn't. 

Among many other issues, they weren't hunting for new business, their messaging was bad, they were ineffective at discovery and qualifying, and their win-rate suffered accordingly.  Prior to the evaluation, leadership believed they were very good at doing these things. However, everything is relative.

The key question that must be asked is, "Good at doing these things compared to who?"  The problem was, that like most companies, there was no intelligence against which their beliefs could be compared, and when they received that comparison, they were shocked! At the same time, they were relieved to know where they stood, and what had to be done to increase their revenue!

Get your sales team evaluated!  

Email me for immediate help.

Image Copyright 123RF 

As a Nor'Easter barreled across Central Massachusetts today, a few interesting storm-related happenings were analogous to some sales-related occurrences. This article will explore two weather-related analogies:

1. It's in 3D - Dinger the Dog and his choice of Doors
2. The Magic of Weather Apps

I've written about Dinger, our six-year-old Golden Doodle, several times.  The most popular article was when I claimed and proved that Dinger's listening skills were better than those of salespeople. 

At the onset of the storm Dinger went out to do his business and got soaked.  When he's ready to come back into the house, he usually looks in the windows to see which room we are in, and whether that's in the front of the house or the back of the house he goes to a front or back door and knocks just like we do.  Knock-knock-knock. He knew he was soaked so he went to the side door, which opens into a room with a tile floor, where we dry him with a towel.  A new trick - he knew which door to use based on the weather!

Dinger is smarter than so many salespeople who regularly use the wrong doors.   Some salespeople use the back door which leads to the warehouse.  Others use the front door which leads directly to reception and procurement.  Some use the side door which brings them to business users and middle management.  But the best salespeople, the top 10%, use the private entrance which leads to the C Suite.  If you had to rank the doors in order of importance, regardless of what you are selling, it would be:

1. The Private Entrance - this is where decisions - about everything - are made.  Worst case, you get a top-down introduction to someone who deals with what you sell.  I remember the first time that happened to me around 40 years ago.  The CEO, who I didn't know, introduced me to the VP Sales, who I didn't know.  I wasn't very impressive and was really young but that Sales VP felt pressured to do business with me by what he perceived to be a strong relationship between me and the CEO.  Which is easier and more powerful - fighting your way up or getting introduced on your way down?
2. The Warehouse - There are only two reasons to enter the warehouse.  Either you are looking for door number 2 - the entrance to the Plant Manger's office, or you are talking with people working in the plant to identify issues that you can use in a meeting with the VP of Manufacturing or the VP of Engineering after the CEO introduces them to you.
3. The Side Door - I can't think of a good reason to enter through the side door because users and middle managers don't have the authority to say anything except, "looks good," "we'll let you know," and "No."
4. The Front Entrance - The only thing worse than the side door is the door that delivers you to the official gatekeepers of the kingdom and of course, procurement.  If you are selling the right way, you might end up in procurement to formalize terms, and get sign-off on a Purchase Order. You must never begin in Procurement unless you simply offer no value, have the lowest price, and are selling large quantities of a low priced product. When people write about the death of selling, that's really a phrase about where salespeople go to die.  Procurement.

47% of salespeople reach decision makers but 90% of the best salespeople reach decision makers while only 5% of the worst salespeople reach decision makers.  Do you think there is a correlation?  What about causation?  Damn straight.

The storm caused me to regularly check the weather apps.  Apps plural because for some reason, despite having access to the exact same data, they all predict something completely different.  My four apps of choice were:

1. Accuweather  predicted 12-18 inches of snow
2. Weather.com  predicted 4-8 inches of snow
3. Apple Weather (formerly Dark Sky) predicted an inch of mixed precipitation
4. Fox Weather predicted 2 inches of rain and sleet.

Post Storm Note: We received 3 inches of snow so Weather.com came the closest - this time.

Could four forecasts be more different and confusing?  Forecasting winter weather in New England is tricky and the difference between rain, snow, ice and mixed precipitation can sometimes come down to the center of the storm tracking a few more miles east or west of the original storm track.

Weather forecasts are the same as forecasting a sale. 

There is your personal sales forecast, which by nature will be overly optimistic as you'll have it closing sooner than it actually will, and for more money than you'll actually get.  But lost in your forecast are the forecasts from your three competitors.  They too will forecast a win and unlike the weather apps, which all have the potential to get the forecast correct, only one of your forecasts will be accurate.  Only one of four can win - a 25% chance of being right. 

And you're going to win this because why?  They like you better?  You have a strong relationship?  You have a better product?  You have a better price?  You have faster delivery?  You have a better reputation?  You have better references?  You've been around longer?  Your quality is better?

Who cares about that stuff other than you?  If those were truly the difference makers you would win every deal, every single time.  But you don't win every deal, do you? 

The question isn't "why not?"  The question is why are your forecasts wrong?

Most of the time, sales forecasts fail to take into consideration the following:

• If the salesperson entered through the correct door - are they talking with THE decision maker as opposed to A decision maker or influencer?
• Was there a compelling reason for the prospect to take action and is there a compelling reason to buy from you instead of the competition?
• Was the salesperson effective enough selling value so that the prospect will spend more to buy from you?
• Was the opportunity thoroughly qualified?

While 28% of salespeople are strong qualifiers, 77% of the best salespeople are strong qualifiers and 0% of the worst salespeople are strong qualifiers.  ZERO!  Do you think there is a correlation?  What about causation? 

Think like Dinger, use four weather apps, become a strong consultative seller and a strong qualifier, and your sales effectiveness will improve drastically!

What kind of car should you drive?

Answering that question with anything other than, "It depends," is irresponsible because there are so many variables.  Choosing a car depends on budget, family size, how much stuff you load into your car, the length of your drives, the logo/ego influence, fit and function, ergonomics, appearance, perceived value, reliability, cost to drive it (gas/electric/mileage), and so much more.   

If that makes senses, why do executives struggle when I am unable to instantly tell them what their win-rate or closing percentage should be?

There are many variables that can influence your sales win-rate and I am sharing my top ten keys to identifying appropriate ideal win rates:

1. Which stage of the pipeline is the win-rate calculated from?  Lead? Suspect? Prospect? Qualified, Closable?  It should be obvious that a higher win-rate correlates to measuring win-rates from the latest stage of the sales pipeline.
   
   
2. How much competition is there? A higher win-rate will correlate with fewer competitors.
   
   
3. How effectively do your salespeople handle the existence of competitors? Only 27% of all salespeople have Sales DNA that supports the mindset necessary for eliminating the competition.  This soars to 61% of the top salespeople and 1% of the least effective salespeople.  Higher win-rates correlate with the ability to eliminate the competition.
   
   
4. How does your pricing compare?  We can talk about selling value until the end of sales cycles, but if your salespeople haven't mastered selling value (consultative selling skills and a sales process that supports it are required), then the purchase will be based on price.  A higher-win rate will correlate with a competitive price in a transactional sale but in a value-based sale, higher win-rates will correlate with the amount of perceived value.  Only 31% of salespeople are value sellers.  This increases to 95% of top salespeople and NONE of the least effective salespeople!
   
   
5. What is the length of your sales cycle? The answer to the sales cycle question is less definitive.  On the one hand, long sales cycles are very much about the survival of the fittest and fewer competitors lead to a higher win-rate.  On the other hand, long sales cycles are fraught with risk because many of these complex projects become de-prioritized, abandoned, or indefinitely delayed.  Only 38% of all salespeople possess the capabilities to shorten long sales cycles, thereby gaining a competitive advantage.  73% of top salespeople have this ability but very few of the least effective salespeople.
   
   
6. Is there a sales scorecard?  A properly built scorecard awards points to conditions that are predictive of a win.  A higher win-rate correlates with higher scores.  Only 20% of all salespeople use a sales scorecard. 40% of top salespeople use a scorecard only 5% of the least effective salespeople use a scorecard. An 800% gap!
   
   
7. How disciplined is the sales team?  It requires discipline to follow the sales process, fully qualify opportunities, and not pursue opportunities that fail to meet the minimum required score.  Discipline is also required to refrain from quoting opportunities that cannot be won. A higher win-rate correlates to discipline.
   
   
8. When are proposals and quotes provided?  Ideally, you would only provide a proposal for an opportunity on which you have already received a verbal go-ahead for which your proposal is simply a formality.  It should go without saying that a higher-win rate correlates to proposals as a formality.  80% of all salespeople are compelled to quote and/or propose and this is a very difficult mindset to change.
   
   
9. What is the overall sales capability of your sales team?  We see team scores range from the 30's to the 60's.  It should go without saying that a higher win-rate correlates to a higher sales team capability score.
   
   
10. How strong are the relationships with your prospects and customers?  While this is difficult for anyone to know, it should still be obvious that high win-rates correlate with strong relationships. 47% of salespeople have strong relationships but that goes to 61% for the best salespeople and just 31% for the least effective salespeople.
    
    

These ten factors help to determine what your win-rate is TODAY. High quality and ongoing sales training, sales coaching and daily role-playing maximize your ability to IMPROVE the win rate going forward, especially when the focus is on an optimized, milestone-centric and customer focused sales process, a consultative approach that develops listening and questioning skills, and the many nuances of selling value.  A higher win-rate correlates with more training, coaching and role-playing.

The statistics and data shared in this article are from Objective Management Group's (OMG) evaluations and assessments on more than 2.3 million salespeople.  OMG measures all 21 Sales Core Competencies and an average of 10 attributes in each competency.  You can view all 21 sales competencies here, and see how the scores compare for salespeople by percentile, in various industries, and even at your company. It's free to look!

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