It's amazing what Harvard Business Review will print on their pages when it comes to the subject of sales.  This post marks the 6th time that I have strongly felt the need to question an article appearing on their pages.  The November 2013 issue featured an article titled Dismantling the Sales Machine.

Here's the premise:  Companies that have been rigorously enforcing sales process should stop doing so because it is resulting in longer sales cycles, decreased conversion rates, unreliable forecasts and depressed margins.  So they say.  Here are some of the many problems with their premise:

• Their survey data is limited to 2,500 salespeople at 30 member companies.
• It was a survey!
• Their member companies are big companies.  Most of what happens when they sell stuff doesn't apply to small and mid-market companies.
• As recently as April of 2013, Objective Management Group's (OMG) data on 1831615 salespeople overall, and 85,000 from the past 12 months, showed that 91% of the companies did not have a formal, structured sales process in place.  In other words, lack of sales process (typical since I entered the sales development space in 1985) has not changed at all!
• They may have accurately identified the effects (sales cycle, conversion ratios, forecasts and margins), but missed the boat on cause.  Those are the exact same issues we have identified in the 10,000 companies whose sales forces we have evaluated - the companies where 91% did not have sales processes!

Based on my 28 years of hands-on sales consulting and training experience, along with the data we have accumulated at OMG over the past 23 years, I can report this to you:

If the executives from the 30 companies in the survey have any similarity at all with the executives I have spoken with from thousands of companies, then they only believe they have a sales process, they think their salespeople are following it and they think that sales management is holding them accountable.

The reality is they only think it.  5 Steps don't make a process.  7 steps don't make a process either.  Let me give you an example:

In 2005, I wrote Baseline Selling and it contains both the Baseline Selling sales process and the Baseline Selling sales methodology.  [The difference between sales process and sales methodology]  

All you need to know about the generic form of the Baseline Selling process is that there are 4 stages consisting of steps and milestones:

• Reaching 1st
• Reaching 2nd
• Reaching 3rd
• Running Home

To put things in context, let's use a couple of the other well-known selling brands: 

• SPIN Selling - Most people think it's a process, but it's a methodology and SPIN, in its entirety, would fit between 1st and 2nd base in Baseline Selling.
• Strategic Selling would fit between 2nd and 3rd base and would also be used in the on-deck circle in Baseline Selling.
• Sandler is a methodology with some milestones that would appear in 3 of the 4 base paths.

None of the 3 are complete sales processes.

I have seen dozens of so-called corporate sales processes.  Nearly all of them would have steps that would belong between Home and 1st Base, and then between 3rd Base and Home, skipping all of the steps/milestones that must occur between 1st and 2nd, and between 2nd and 3rd.

I've seen processes that were so terribly sequenced that it was nearly impossible for salespeople to gain traction.  The point is that having a process is not the same as having an effective process and, in most cases, is no more effective than having no process at all.

The authors made a recommendation that I believe was even more flawed than their data and conclusions.  They suggest giving salespeople flexibility to use a judgment-focused, rather than process-focused approach.  Well, according to the data on 1831615 salespeople, 91% of whom were already selling by the seat of their pants (aka best judgment), we could expect them to have trouble with sales cycles, conversions, forecasting reliability and margins.  Sound familiar?

If the authors want to identify the cause of those 4 effects, they should look no further than sales management, 82% of whom aren't able to coach their weak salespeople to sell more consultatively - the other reason for the 4 effects.  Proof of their ineffective coaching can be found on page 4 of the longer than necessary article where examples of questions that used to be asked during pipeline reviews are revealed.  Those aren't sales coaching questions, those are tick marks in the CRM system!

Those same big company, weak salespeople are getting their lunches handed to them by the better trained, more motivated sales forces of smaller and mid-market companies that are getting the help they need to customize and implement formal, structured sales processes, train their sales managers to coach and train their salespeople to sell consultatively.

Surveys are fun.  They tell you what people think.  Science is better.  It tells you what is really taking place and why.  Science asks questions.  Surveys report answers, allowing survey authors to jump to conclusions that may not be applicable outside of the survey population.

What are your thoughts?  

By the way, this is World Awareness Week - a Celebration of Top Sales World - click the image below to visit.

I read this recent article from the Harvard Business Review Blog about CEO's and the need for them to get serious about Sales.  Then there was this question from Focus.com wanting to know how to deal with a negative sales rep.

The article and the question are both quite benign.  My frustration is with the comments, where both the best and worst that social media has to offer grows.  Everyone becomes Rush Limbaugh - an expert in their own opinions - and many of those opinions are flat out wrong.  It's not just with the two examples above, it's with nearly every question that gets asked on LinkedIn.com, Focus.com, Task.fm, and other sites where, in many cases, the subject matter experts are the ones initiating the questions just to call attention to themselves.  And when sales leaders initiate the questions, how do they differentiate best practices from stupid practices?  

The problem is that they can't!  If they knew the best approach, they wouldn't ask the question in the first place.  And because they don't know the best approach, they align themselves with the answer that makes them feel the most comfortable - not necessarily the answer that provides the best results.

Experts don't always agree on best practices for the sales force.  Some don't have best practice success in multiple industries/markets.  Others lack expertise in all discliplines of optimizing a sales force.  Others are one-trick ponies - their expertise is limited to a single discipline. Other experts are laid-off or retired sales & marketing executives.  To whom should you listen?  Whose Blog should you read?  Whom should you believe?  Whom should you hire to help?

There are so many sites to visit for content.  I suggest that you use those sites as a means to identify experts who make you think, consistently provide good, solid, relevant, applicable, advice, and then follow them on their own blogs.  

When it comes to Sales Leadership Best Practices, here are two opportunities which could help:

I presented the 5 Sales Management Best Practices for this Sales & Marketing Management Webinar.  Click here to view/listen to the archive.

If you want something a more comprehensive than a one-hour Webinar, join me in October for my renowned Sales Leadership Intensive - two days of comprehensive, interactive, entertaining, applicable, non-stop, unforgettable leadership training.  Click here to learn more and if you would like to attend, email me directly and I'll get you special pricing.

Dozens of people emailed me the link to this article, which appeared on the Harvard Business Review Blog.  They couldn't wait to hear my reaction.  The HBR article accomplishes two things:

1. It categorizes salespeople into 1 of 5 styles.
2. It concludes that salespeople who belong to the "Challenger" style dramatically outperform relationship builders.

The Blog at the Harvard Business Review recently ran this article about the top seven personality traits of successful salespeople.  Thanks to Peter for sending this along to me.

Regular readers know how much I cringe when anyone attempts to suggest that personality tests are or could be predictive of sales performance.  If you haven't read it before, read this series of articles and especially this article along with its embedded links that expose the truth about using personality assessments for sales.

Back to Harvard's Blog.  Is their article any different from others I have debunked?  No!  They make the same mistakes.  They lead people to believe that if they identify someone who is modest, conscientous, achievement oriented, not very self-conscious, curious, not very gregarious and who doesn't get discouraged, they will have a top salesperson.  Surely, they can't be serious!

The biggest problem with this particular article wasn't even the personality assessment.  It was the qualification for top performers.  In most companies, the top performers are some of the weakest salespeople on the planet!  These are the people who have inherited the biggest and best accounts, who manage the sweetest territories, or who have simply rested on their laurels.  Isn't it more likely that this article simply looked at some of the common traits of an effective account manager?

Personality assessments are wonderful.  Just don't use them to determine whether a salesperson will succeed in your particular sales role!