A lot of the salespeople I coach have a weakness in their Sales DNA - their need to be liked.  Approximately 58% of all salespeople have this weakness and on average, salespeople score 76% in that competency.  Elite salespeople have an average score of 87% and weak salespeople have an average score of 69%.

What would it look like if we were to pivot this data and look only at the group who have it as a weakness?  When we filter the results by the need to be liked, there are some very interesting scores.  Could it be that the need to be liked - by itself - is a predictor of sales success?  Maybe.  We know that if the salesperson is in an account management role, the need to be liked is an asset.  However, in any kind of producer role, especially in a consultative process or methodology, it will get in the way.  Take a look at this data!

The most striking takeaway here is that salespeople who don't need to be liked, score 47% higher on their ability to reach decision makers!  This video discusses the inability to reach decision makers.

Salespeople who don't need to be liked are also 51% more likely to close the opportunities in their pipeline and score 42% higher in the Consultative Seller competency.

Would we see the same kinds of differences if we filtered by another Sales DNA weakness?  Maybe.  What we do know that most salespeople enter sales because of their need to be liked.  It might help them to make friends - over time - but the need to be liked can be death when it comes to:

• having the difficult conversation to differentiate this salesperson from everyone else
• identifying the prospect's compelling reasons to buy
• causing prospects to believe they must do business with this salesperson.

Salespeople who need to be liked aren't able to do those things.  It's too uncomfortable for them because they are afraid that their questions will cause their prospects to dislike them.

Finally, salespeople who don't need to be liked score 24% better in the hunting competency, partly because they score 25% better in being rejection proof.  That translates to a much bigger pipeline, from which many more opportunities move through the sales process to a close.

So then, what does a salesperson do if they are burdened with the need to be liked and want to improve?

If you're a sales manager, you must attend my Sales Leadership Intensive to learn the only coaching approach that will help you coach those salespeople up.  The next one is in two weeks and there are still some seats left. 

If you're a salesperson, you'll need to be coached to overcome this weakness because training and reading alone won't make it go away.  It usually takes between 8-12 months to overcome the need to be liked so good luck! 

Join the discussion on this article on Linkedin.

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The difference between great salespeople and weak salespeople has been debated for years.  The articles in my Blog typically address these differences with science and data to support to my position. 

For example, In 2018 alone I have written 21 such articles:

Data Shows That Only 14% are Qualified for the Easiest Selling Roles

The Wrong Salespeople are Hired 77% of the Time

Examples of How Salespeople Lose Credibility with Their Prospects

Golden Nuggets from the CSO Insights 2018 Sales Talent Study

New Data Shows that You Can Double Revenue by Overcoming This One Sales Weakness

Salespeople With This Weakness Score 47% Worse at Reaching Decision Makers

New Data Shows That Elite Salespeople are 700% Less Likely to Do This

Elite Salespeople are 26 Times More Effective at This Competency Than Weak Salespeople

Does Being a Strong Qualifier Correlate to Having a Strong Pipeline?

Elite Salespeople are 200% Better in These 3 Sales Competencies

Latest Data - Strong Salespeople Score 375% Better Than Weak Salespeople

Latest Data Shows Most Salespeople Would be Fired or Arrested if they Worked in Accounting

New Data Shows How Relationships and the Need to be Liked Impact Sales Performance

New Data Shows Sales Weaknesses Cause Powerful Chain Reactions in Salespeople

Discovered - Data Reveals the Second Biggest Obstacle to Closing More Sales

Discovered - Data Reveals the Biggest Obstacle to Closing More Sales

New Data Reveals Why Veteran Salespeople Are Not Better Than New Salespeople

Data Shows Most Salespeople are Dinosaurs When it Comes to Social Selling

Persistence Over Polish - What the Top 10% of All Salespeople Do Better

What Happens When You Force a Square Sales Peg into a Round Sales Hole?

Is the Sales Force Getting Dressed Up or are Real Changes Taking Place?

Other Blogs, and far too often, the Harvard Business Review and Blog, state these differences using junk science - anecdotal observations.  While those observations can be useful, they do not actually differentiate between good and bad, as much as they are what the authors perceive as personality traits commonly found among good salespeople.

I reviewed data from nearly 511,000 sales evaluations and assessments from among the that Objective Management Group (OMG) has produced to date.  I compared 21 Sales Core Competencies (you can see much of that data here) of the top 5% (elite) with the bottom 50% of all salespeople.  Then I identified the 4 competencies with the biggest gaps and you can see those in the image below.

The 4 competencies with the biggest gaps are all tactical selling competencies and on average, the top 5% have these competencies as strengths 544% more often than the bottom 50%. However, the 544% number isn't really the story.  The big story is that that 64% of the top 5% have the Consultative Selling as a strength compared with only 3% of the bottom 50%.  Nearly as big a story is that 91% of the top 5% are strong at the Qualifying competency compared with only 6% of the bottom 50%.  And a whopping 95% of the top 5% are strong at the Value Selling competency compared with only 10% of the bottom 50%.

So what does this mean?

Elite salespeople are twice as likely to have solid pipelines because nearly every one of them are strong at the Hunting Competency.  Then, because they are so proficient at selling value and qualifying their opportunities, a high percentage of a greater number of opportunities close and not because they are better closers!

Weak salespeople - in this case, more than 255,000 of them - are twice as likely to have a weak pipeline, and because they are selling transactionally and not consultatively, they close a very small percentage of a smaller number of opportunities.  That's why they are so ineffective. 

Could there be a better case for why transactional selling doesn't work?  Please tell me if you have one!

The other story here is that it's value selling and qualifying that almost every elite salesperson executes so effectively while only 2/3 of them have learned to excel at a consultative selling approach.

The gaps are clear and if you manage salespeople, the question is how do you coach your salespeople up and close such a large gap?  You must attend my Sales Leadership Intensive and learn to coach to these 4 competencies and more.  And if 30% of your people can't be coached up, use the most customizable, accurate and predictive sales specific candidate assessment to easily identify the top 25%.

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Image Copyright BrianAJackson

Over the years I've debunked a number of articles that cited nothing but junk science. The authors often relied on observation, anecdotal evidence and personal opinion while proclaiming traits, competencies, skills and differentiators between top salespeople and everyone else. Today those articles would qualify as fake news.  My rebuttals to those articles, many of which can be found here, are always based on science.

Speaking of the difference between fake news and real sales science, the next topic downright amazes me and should amaze you too. 

On April 4, 2017, Nearly 22,000 people had viewed the 5 traits of the best salespeople - traits that are purely anecdotal on the author's part - while only around 6,000 had viewed the scientific rebuttal. 25,000 people had viewed the 21 Sales Core Competencies that were updated in 2014, but only 10,000 had viewed the 2017 revision of the 21 Sales Core Competencies.  Just to be clear, I'm not whining about popularity, traffic or page views.  

This is really about sales professionals who place more faith in the traits that are consistent with their beliefs, fearing that their actual capabilities won't match up with the science.  People want to see themselves in the most popular, positive way.  They don't want to discover that they might be lacking in 10 of the 21 Sales Core Competencies or have gaps in all 21.

Speaking of the 21 Sales Core Competencies, OMG has a brand new tool that I promise you're gonna love.  

We built a very cool website that you can use to see the average scores for each of the 21 Sales Core Competencies, the average scores for your industry and even how your own company compares.  You must check it out - keep reading!

Here's how it works:  

1. Go to the site and select your industry.  
2. For each of the 21 Sales Core Competencies, average scores for all salespeople, plus the top 10%, the bottom 10% as well as salespeople from your industry, will be displayed in side-by-side comparisons. If you need further explanations there are videos that provide more detail on each competency.
3. At any point, during your tour through the 21 Sales Core Competencies, you can request that your own company be included in the comparison - free of charge!  No catch. No conditions.  Simply click on the "learn how your salespeople are doing" button displayed beneath the competencies.  
4. Fill in the very limited contact information (we don't sell it and we won't call you unless you ask us to) and we'll email a link for your salespeople to be assessed.  
5. When your salespeople have completed the assessment process, the "Your Company" column in each graph will be populated with the data for your company.  Awesome and easy!  We'll keep you posted about their progress.
6. Options to gain access to additional detailed data and information will be made available.

The early feedback on this site has been amazing - people love being able to access this data and compare it to their own and I'm sure you'll find it fascinating too!  Enjoy.

Image owned by or licensed to CartoonStock®

The Harvard Business Review is at it again.  I honestly can't believe that a publication like HBR continues to publish and push junk science about sales.  Nearly every time they publish an article on sales or selling, they are usually as wrong as the mainstream media is with their attempts to manipulate readers and viewers to vote for their preferred candidates. 

I have previously taken issue with seven of HBR's articles: 

• HBR Off Target on Sales Greatness
• HBR Wrong on How to Hire Salespeople
• HBR Gets Salespeople All Wrong
• HBR Hits Then MIsses the Mark on Sales
• HBR Study of Salespeople Makes News
• More Junk Science from HBR
• HBR Article Leaves Me with Mixed Feelings

In their June 20, 2016 article, A Portrait of the Overperforming Salesperson, HBR identified several traits, attitudes and actions that they claim differentiate the top from bottom performers.  I'll summarize it for you below and then explain why I believe it is junk.  The findings include:

• Focus which they described as including Money motivated, respected, likable and effective at prioritizing their time
• Career Orientation which they described as including how much they think about work and why they went into sales
• Personal Attributes which they described as including how they remember their childhood and what they use to make decisions
• Customer Interaction Strategy which they described as tailoring, asking questions, being likable and having personal relationships  (these do differentiate tops from bottoms)
• Attitude which was word association around sales management and sales process (word association?  really?)
• Self Perception  which was checking off boxes to indicate the traits they believed they had

This was a survey of 1,000 salespeople. 1/3 of them are in field sales, 1/3 are in inside sales and the rest are sales managers or Sales VP's. 

Only 15% met the author's criteria of meeting quota 88% of the time. Although we weren't told what the quotas were, it's pretty safe to assume that the field salespeople manage accounts in existing territories.  Based on the questions asked, it is also safe to assume that the inside salespeople are making calls to and taking calls from existing customers.   So just in case you can't do the math, when you account for the sales managers and sales VP's in the survey, it changes the population from 1,000 top performing salespeople, to 150 people who don't have to find new business.  That is quite a distinction!  

I hate these surveys because surveys do not equate to science.

Compare this to Objective Management Group's (OMG) actual science from evaluating and assessing more than 1,000,000 salespeople from more than 200 industries over the past 2 decades.  7% are elite, and there are 16% more who are strong.  77% are ineffective.  From its 1,000,000 rows of data, I can assure you that no personality trait or behavioral style of any kind is predictive of sales success. Traits and styles are good to know - they help you understand who your employees are.  But they have never been, nor will they ever be, predictive of sales success.  

There are 21 Sales Core Competencies. Most of these competencies include as many as 10 attributes. Here are just some of the many differences between the top 10% and the bottom 10%:

If you look at Sales DNA - the combination of strengths that supports the use of strategy, tactics, process and methodology, you'll see that the top 10% are, on average, nearly 60% stronger than the bottom 10%.  You'll also see that the top 10% have an average Sales Quotient that is nearly 60% higher than the bottom 10%.  The top 10% have double the commitment to do whatever it takes to achieve sales excellence. For the more tactical competencies, the average scores for the top 10% are approximately double those of the bottom 10%. 

When we break sales down by difficulty level, industry sector, vertical market, decision maker to be called upon, price points, etc., the specific findings and scores that differentiate tops from bottoms change accordingly!  Now please tell me, when we have real science like this, what is the HBR thinking when they publish rubbish like personal attributes, attitude and self perception?

Will Barron recently interviewed me on some of these topics and it was a really good interview. You can watch or listen to it here.

Lori Richardson recently interviewed me on some of these topics too - another really good interview, that you can get here.

This article states that 4% of the salespeople sell 94% of the business.  I don't agree with their percentage but it gives you a sense of what is really taking place in sales.

And from OMG's data, this is just in.  The bottom 10% of all salespeople are actually better than the top 10% in 1 of the 21 Sales Core Competencies.  I'll bet you can guess which one...scroll down for the answer...

Relationship Building! It's no wonder that crappy salespeople keep getting hired.  You can hire the best salespeople for your role when you use OMG's accurate and predictive sales candidate assessment.  Try it!