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.

I can grow a pretty decent five o'clock shadow  - above my upper lip and only after about a week.  Unlike the bearded lady at the circus, when it comes to facial hair, there's really not much there!

Can you think of something else which, at first glance, appears to be OK but upon closer inspection, there's really not much there?

Did you guess sales pipelines?

As I wrote about a month ago, 46% of salespeople fail to maintain a full pipeline but most salespeople don't even know how many opportunities must be in the pipeline for it to be full.  

46% is very similar to the percentage of reps that make their quota each year.  Coincidence?

This is really a hunting issue and as I wrote in last month's article, only 33% of all salespeople have hunting as a strength.

So what are hunting-averse salespeople to do?

Cold emails don't work very well.  Want proof?  I get at least a half-dozen cold emails each day just from companies trying to sell a service to book meetings by using email, LinkedIn and Twitter.  I delete those emails.

Cold calls still work the way they always did but not until you reach a decision maker.  Most salespeople give up after four attempts but today it takes between six and fifteen attempts to actually get through.

Outsourced and semi-automated cold calls work if you outsource them to a company that's good at it - like ConnectAndSell - who also offers automated dialing.  They dial multiple names on your list at the same time until someone answers and then the salesperson takes over the call.

An inside team of Sales Development reps can book meetings if you're willing to make the investment and settle for the underwhelming results.  They might be able to average 1.5 meetings booked per week. If they do it on their own, salespeople should be two to three times better.  Of course, if you already have a flow of inbound leads, SDR's can follow up on those leads as they come in.  Immediate follow up has a significantly better chance of converting.  For most salespeople, even with the aid of an SDR-scheduled meeting, the pipeline isn't full.  They need to supplement - but probably aren't doing that.

Woody Allen said that 80% of success is showing up.  While good messaging beats lack of messaging, showing up wins the day over those who hide.

That applies to cold calls.  There aren't many salespeople who are good at making cold calls but those who are committed to making them, are disciplined about it, and call until they reach their targets, succeed because they did what most salespeople won't do.  Here are some good reasons to get back into the habit of picking up the phone, punching in a number and pressing send:

• Your competition is not making calls
• You can control how many prospects you dial
• You can control how many conversations you have
• You won't have to compete for eyeballs like you do with email or social  media
• You can get your prospect engaged on a phone conversation
• You can close for an appointment if you get them engaged
• You can quickly build a strong pipeline just by showing up (on the phone)

You will crush:

• Your quota
• Your best earnings year
• Your colleagues
• Your competition

Just pick up the phone and start dialing it!

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We all see the effects that strong leaders have when they surround themselves with either strong, mediocre or weak people.  What happens when strong leaders inherit a mixed team?  What happens when they hire a mixed team?  What happens when we ask the same questions about weak leaders?

I dug into a subset of data from Objective Management Group's (OMG) evaluations of the salespeople who report to more than 15,000 sales managers to determine whether the best sales managers actually have the best salespeople.  I was surprised and disappointed by what I found.  Check this out!

In the first table, you'll notice that salespeople reporting to elite sales managers are 14% stronger overall than those who report to weak sales managers.  That's good, but why isn't there a larger gap?  I'll answer that question shortly.

The second table clearly shows that strong sales managers have 25% more elite and strong salespeople reporting to them than elite sales managers. How can that be explained? And the relatively small gap from the first table?

I have a simple explanation that you may or may not agree with.  Elite sales managers have so much confidence in their abilities, that they refuse to give up on mediocre salespeople.  They believe that given enough time they can coach everyone up.  Along the same line of thinking, elite sales managers also tend to believe that they don't have to hire A players because as long as the salespeople they select have a great personality and industry knowledge, they believe they can train and coach them to become strong performers. Because of that, elite sales managers tend to take shortcuts at hiring time as evidenced by their lower scores for recruiting.  Without a doubt, they should be using an accurate and predictive sales-specific candidate assessment like OMG's award-winning tool.

While the best sales managers do tend to have better salespeople, the contrast is not nearly as sharp as most of us would expect it to be, but explains why leaders don't understand when strong sales manager's teams are not significantly more effective than weak sales manager's teams.

Image Copyright iStock Photos