I began debunking sales articles when the first ones predicting the death of selling appeared circa 2008.  Back then, new digital marketing companies were telling everyone that salespeople would be replaced by inbound marketing.  "Inbound is King," they said.

Later, articles predicting the end of selling became both more prolific and more specific including the certain death of:

1. Solution Selling
2. Cold Calling
3. Consultative Selling
4. Sales Process
5. SPIN Selling
6. and more.

If you looked closely and skeptically at who was writing the articles and who the writers worked for, you could recognize that the articles were simply a narrative to create a need for their brand new, and at the time, unproven products.  Fifteen years later, their products have a place at the very top of the sales funnel.  Ironically, instead of replacing salespeople they said would become obsolete, they created a need for a whole new breed of salespeople - BDRs - to follow up on all of the crappy leads generated by their inbound marketing platforms.  And the very same companies who were claiming that their SaaS marketing platforms would replace salespeople actually required salespeople - lots of them - to sell their applications.  Back when Hubspot was scaling its sales team, they used Objective Management Group's (OMG) sales candidate assessments to identify the right salespeople for their various selling roles.

There are two ironic byproducts of the inbound phenomenon:

1. Account executives who benefit from the appointment setting provided by BDRs not only don't prospect; they don't know how! 
2. Most BDRs are atrocious at making outbound calls, sending emails and LinkedIn reach outs, and following up on inbound leads. They average only 1.5 meetings booked per week!

Like Kale salad, Cauliflower pizza crusts, and charred broccolini, the Death of Selling is about to become an unwelcome (to me) menu item in the form of AI. 

We're seeing ChatGPT's ability to create human-like articles, essays, poems, notes and messages. 

I just asked ChatGPT to write a short poem on the death of selling.  Here's what it generated.

Selling, oh selling, how you've changed,
No longer can you be so deranged,
In the past, you used to deceive,
But now it's time for us to leave.

Customers now are more aware,
They're educated and they're prepared,
To be sold on anything they see,
No longer works in this industry.

The death of selling has now arrived,
And it's time for us to be revived,
We must shift our focus to serving,
Our customers' needs and preserving.

It's not about what we can sell,
But how we can help them excel,
Our job is now to listen and learn,
To provide insights that make them yearn.

For products and services that we provide,
Not because we pushed or we lied,
But because we helped them find,
Solutions that were one of a kind.

The death of selling is not the end,
But a new beginning we must contend,
To serve our customers with all our might,
And make our business soar to new heights.

Not bad.

Microsoft Bing has recently built AI into its search engine.  It is a work in progress with built-in bias, the sometimes horrible things it writes, and its propensity for error.  AI hasn't come close to living up to its potential in the sales world. Our proof is in the horrible daily bot-driven reach outs we get via email and LinkedIn messages.  Some of those are driven by AI.  Some are created with AI.  Some are claiming to use AI.  And look no further than the customer service chat boxes on virtually every website.  Who hasn't been frustrated having to deal with those?

But not to worry.

Just like the threats from 15 years ago, the soon-to-be written articles predicting the death of sales will have as much predictive accuracy as their predecessors.  But like vitamin D, you have built-in protection! There are many sales jobs that simply cannot be replaced.  If you work in a quota-carrying sales role for an underdog, you are always and forever safe.  

How do you know if you work for an underdog?

The characteristics of an underdog are:

• You don't have the lowest price. Only one company in each territory, vertical or space can claim that and since it probably isn't you, you'll have to sell value.  That is insurance against obsolescence.
• Your company isn't a household name. The brand names are your industry's equivalent of Apple, Dell, HP, Salesforce, Google, and Microsoft.  If that's not you, then you sell against one of them and that makes you an underdog.  More insurance.
• You work for a start up and/or are selling new technology. That means you have to do proof of concepts, taste tests, show your financial staying power, and point to things you do better than the well-known companies and technologies you compete against.  You know who you are and AI could never do what you do.
• You sell custom-engineered equipment or software.  Do you remember OJ Simpson's defense team's acquittal line about the glove?  "If it doesn't fit you must acquit."  Same with custom.  My quote for custom: "If it must be designed, you won't need to resign."

Don't worry about all of the coming-soon hype.  Instead, do the following:

• Get yourself evaluated by the #1 Sales assessment in the world so that you have an objective understanding of your current sales capabilities in all 21 Sales Core Competencies.  Your understanding should not be skewed based on your team, your company, your competition or your industry.  Click here and copy and paste I would like to have myself evaluated into the comment box.
• Based on your selling strengths, weaknesses and skills, ask the sales expert who reviews the evaluation with you to recommend the sales role for which you are most well suited.
• Get some sales training and coaching to fill the gaps in the sales competencies where you don't score as high.
• Get yourself a sales position with an underdog.  As long as you perform, you are safe from becoming obsolete!

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Four weeks ago, Marc Wayshak, Founder of Sales Insight Labs, an Allego company, emailed me a very insightful infographic. Returning from two weeks vacation, I was buried in work and filed the email until I had time to review it.  Today, a client was nice enough to postpone their training to next week and that provided me with two hours to dig into both the infographic and data from Objective Management Group (OMG) that might correlate to what he sent me.

You can view the infographic at its original size here.

Their statistics are from nearly 24,000 recorded sales conversations and focus on levels of engagement.  They found that top performers make 54% more switches - the back and forth in conversations - than everyone else and 78% more in their presentations.  The presentations made by top sales performers are not monologues!

OMG's statistics are derived from more than 2.3 million evaluations of salespeople.  OMG's doesn't measure switches - how could it - but it does measure whether salespeople emphasize listening over talking, the skill required for switches. The top 10% of salespeople are 200% stronger at emphasizing listening over talking.  But OMG's difference is 375% larger than Sales Insights Labs.  What could account for that difference?

The 200% represents the skill gap between top and bottom salespeople but skill alone does not translate into action.  Salespeople must also have strong Sales DNA. There are two Sales DNA competencies that are required here.  The sales competency that supports listening is "Stays in the Moment." Salespeople must be present - right here and right now - in order to effectively listen and determine what the next question should be.  The competency that supports asking questions is "Doesn't Need to be Liked." Salespeople who do need to be liked are afraid to ask questions, push back or challenge conventional thinking because they worry their prospects will become upset. When we integrate those two competencies into the mix - salespeople who have both the skill and strengths to support the skill, the modified finding is that top salespeople are 52% stronger, which is within 2 points of the finding from Sales Insights Lab.

Their second insight is that the discovery calls of top performers are 76% longer and sales presentations are 55% longer than everyone else. The Consultative Seller is an OMG sales core competency that measures capabilities in the Discovery Call.  Top Salespeople are 300% stronger at the Consultative Seller competency than bottom salespeople. There are two attributes in the competency which would suggest a better quality conversation that would last longer.  They are "asks enough questions" and "asks great questions".  Salespeople who ask enough questions and ask great questions are 54% more effective than salespeople who don't.  Sales Insights Lab measures the number of questions that are asked and not surprisingly, top performers ask and get asked 30%-43% more questions than everyone else.

The infographic also included an insight about words per minute.  Sales Insights Lab and OMG data agree that top salespeople speak more slowly than everyone else but there is a difference with regards to how much more slowly.  Sales Insights Lab found top salespeople speaking at a rate of around 170 words per minute - 10 words/minute slower than everyone else. OMG's data shows top salespeople speaking at closer to 120 words per minute - much slower than everyone else.  Sales Insights Lab also has data on Pace, where top salespeople get their prospects to speak more slowly than prospects for other salespeople.

So what does all of this powerful data mean?  

Salespeople who take a consultative approach, and take the time to ask lots of good, tough, timely questions, have the difficult conversation that others won't have, and uncover compelling reasons to buy from them, accomplish several things that other salespeople don't accomplish. They:

• More effectively differentiate themselves from other salespeople
• Create urgency - the key to shortening the sales cycle and getting prospects to take action
• Make it easier to fully qualify their prospects because prospects will self-qualify to move things along
• Get their prospects to respect their expertise
• Engage Decision Makers in the Conversation which differentiates and shortens the sales cycle
• Sell the value of them - they become the value.

Evaluate your sales team and then train and coach your salespeople to slow down, stop presenting and start selling like top performers. You will significantly increase revenue.

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My Chrome home page often displays articles that Google thinks I might be interested in. Red Sox, Patriots, politics, software applications, gadgets, and for the first time, sales assessments!  I thought, "Is this for real?"

The first article was the 7 Best Personality Assessments for Your Sales Team.  Regular readers already know that personality assessments are not predictive of sales success because they measure personality traits, not sales core competencies.  That said, they included and mis-categorized Objective Management Group (OMG) as a personality assessment.  Oh well.  At least they knew to include it.  Interestingly, I previously published articles about some of the assessments they listed comparing them to OMG:

Compared to DISC

Compared to Caliper

Compared to Myers-Briggs

The second article was How to Pass a Sales Personality Test.

Again, OMG is not a personality test so it's not surprising that it didn't appear on the list.

The first assessment they named was Caliper which they incorrectly stated shows how personality traits correlate to on-the-job performance.  That would be predictive validity - when findings correlate to on-the-job performance. It's worth noting that OMG is the only sales assessment that uses predictive validity.  Most assessments use construct validity which states that findings are consistent with what they say they are measuring.  Personality assessments have never been and are not now predictive of sales success.

Listing the OPQ as a sales assessment is pretty funny.  They don't even suggest that it is appropriate for sales use!

Hogan is a personality assessment that has been adapted for sales but as with all personality assessments you can be sure of one thing.  They are measuring personality traits, not sales core competencies and as such, they are making assumptions about selling.

Myers-Briggs and DISC round out this list.

To get a better sense of how assessment companies adapt (market) personality tests for sales, the best article that informs on this topic is Exposed - Personality Tests Disguised as Sales Assessments.

My windshield wipers were no longer getting the job done.  They were underperforming (leaving streaks and smudges), not clearing water from the windshield (failing to meet expectations) and I couldn't see the road properly when it was raining.  It presented a threat to our safety and an upgrade was required.  

I ordered Bosch Icon replacement blades, rated #1 by the NY Times, and after 30 minutes of unintentionally trying to put them on backwards, I finally got them installed. They were freaking awesome.  They exceeded my expectations in the rain, and last night they over performed in the snow.

The wiper blade adventure got me thinking about a few things. My car has 37,000 miles on it but the blades should have been replaced 17,000 miles ago so why did I wait so long? How is this similar to what companies go through when their sales team is underperforming?

I speak with a lot of CEOs and Sales Leaders from companies whose sales teams are underperforming.  One thing they seem to have in common is the mileage problem.  When I ask how long the sales team has been underperforming, it is usually the equivalent of 60,000 miles.  It's not a new problem, the signs have been there for YEARS but something recently changed to the extent that they couldn't tolerate it any longer.  The sales team's performance was finally presenting a threat (safety) whereby one or more of revenue, earnings, sustainability, personal income, stock prices, turnover, market share, morale and more were at risk.

What causes executives to wait so long?  Here are five potential reasons:

Hope - They hope this is the month or quarter that turns things around.  As everyone has heard by now, hope is not a strategy.

Misinformation - Their sales managers/sales leaders provide an overly optimistic narrative about how things are going.  "We have a great pipeline."  "We have some great opportunities." "Our salespeople are having some great meetings."  The keyword is great.  What makes the pipeline, opportunities, and meetings great compared to past months or quarters?

Fear - Sales are not very good right now, but what if we ask for outside help and we swing and miss?  Won't that be even worse?

Patience - They don't want to be guilty of a knee-jerk reaction so they wait a little longer.  After all, cash flow is still positive, so what's the harm in waiting?  Just another day.  Sure, another week.  Maybe another month.  Could we kick it down the road for another year?

Ego - They mistakenly believe that if they ask for help they will appear weak.  Executives don't think twice or worry about bruised egos when they need the advice of attorneys, accountants, bankers, commercial insurance agents, property managers, asset managers, wealth managers, etc.  Why does their ego start trouble when it comes to sales experts and their advice?

For every CEO and Sales Leader that do reach out, a third of them will remain in wait-and-see mode, failing to take action  commensurate with their underperforming sales team. They think that one big sale will solve their problem, but the reality is that one big sale will only further mask the problem.

A Sales Team evaluation helps executives - those who are ready and those who are hesitant - to understand why their teams are underperforming and what can be done about it.  You can learn more about a sales team evaluation here.

For the longest time, my local Panera in Westboro Massachusetts was awful.  Like phone company awful. And cable company awful.

The problem was chronic.  The half and half was always empty.  The supplies of cup insulators and trays were nowhere to be found. The wait at the drive-through was intolerable.  Online orders were never ready at or even close to the time they provided for pickup.  Online orders were routinely screwed up.  

And then Panera wasn't a problem anymore.

Over the course of a few weeks in the summer of 2022, everything changed and they became remarkably reliable. What happened? 

They got a new manager! I'm guessing (I did not interview her) the new manager prioritized KPI's and accountability, hiring people who had attention to detail, who were committed to customer satisfaction, and who took personal responsibility.

Could companies that wanted to experience a similar uptick in sales performance achieve that by replacing their sales managers?

Maybe.

it would depend on with whom they replaced the sales manager.

I speak with so many sales leaders who tell me about the four sales managers they went through in the last two years.  I speak with CEOs who tell me about the three sales VPs they went through in the last eighteen months.

There is tremendous pressure to fill these roles because your team's performance will suffer without someone at the helm.  Or is that misinformation?  How much worse could a team perform than how they perform under a sucky sales manager?

Well thought-out role requirements, patience, and being uncompromising are important ingredients to landing the ideal sales leader and/or sales manager.  When companies try to quickly fill an opening and as they often do, make a mistake, they have essentially doubled the amount of time that it takes to put a competent leader in the role.  Had they adhered to the requirements, been patient enough to continue recruiting and interviewing until a candidate met the requirements, and committed to not compromising, it could take an extra month or two, but it will be well worth it.

The problem is that most companies don't really know how to properly set requirements for these two roles, don't have an effective way to ascertain that the sales management and/or sales leadership candidate has the required skills to meet the requirements, and aren't disciplined enough to invest the time to get it right.

I write about Objective Management Group (OMG) a lot, and especially OMG's role-specific, accurate and predictive Sales Candidate Assessments.  I rarely, if ever write about OMG's Sales Management Candidate Assessments or its Sales Leadership Candidate Assessments.  As I mentioned in this article, sales managers must spend the appropriate amount of time and be effective at coaching up salespeople.  How would anyone interviewing a candidate know the candidate was capable of this without the power of OMG's accurate insights?  Request a sample of the sales and/or sales leadership candidate assessments.

Other than actual experience, there are three primary differences between sales managers and sales leaders:

1. Sales Managers are tactical (sleeves rolled up) and should focus on coaching while Sales Leaders are strategic and should focus on leadership (sleeves rolled down).  
2. Sales Managers have salespeople reporting to them while Sales Leaders have Sales Managers reporting to them.   
3. Sales Managers tend to earn in the $125,000 to $175,000 range while Sales Leaders tend to earn in the $250,000 to $350,000 range (US Dollars).

There are a lot of people carrying a Sales VP title who are actually performing the role of Sales Manager.  There are also some over-qualified Sales Managers who compensate for under-qualified and overwhelmed Sales VPs.  If companies could get these two roles right we would see an historic uptick in sales performance.

As part of OMG's Sales Team Evaluations, we conduct role analyses and can show you if you have the right people in the right roles and, if not, which roles they should be in.

OMG also conducts a pipeline analysis, a sales process analysis, a growth opportunity analysis, a sales cycle length analysis, a selling capabilities analysis a motivational analysis, a Sales DNA analysis and so much more.  Request a sample of the SEIA.

OMG has the greatest suite of tools for sales selection and development since sliced Panera Bread.  Would it help you to use OMG?  Contact us here.

My MacBook Pro is running Monterey version 12.6 and it has been charging to only 80%.  This was driving me crazy so I did some digging and found that the default battery setting is "Optimized" where it says the following:  "To reduce battery aging, your Mac learns from your daily charging routine so it can wait to finish charging past 80% until you need to use it on battery."

I'm not the smartest person when it comes to topics other than sales or baseball, but my take is that when plugged in, it will remain 80% charged until I need it to run on battery, at which time it will obviously begin draining - to less than 80%.  This suggests that it will never charge to 100%!  It's not intuitive and takes some decoding.

When interviewing sales and sales leadership candidates, similar counter-intuitive discussions occur. Many candidates claim that money isn't that important because they love sales - until they claim that the base salary isn't high enough.  For others, even though they may not disclose it, the base salary is completely irrelevant as long as the company won't cap the salesperson's total earnings. We need to decode the topic of compensation so that we can be sure that both the base salary and the total on-plan earnings are acceptable to candidates.

It is very important to make sense of the hidden and unpredictable compensation responses because many salespeople leave the company after a short time because they don't believe earnings are equivalent to the compensation that was promised.

It is crucial to understand that salespeople are motivated primarily by one of two motivational styles and unless you wish to hire only one type of salesperson, there must be two compensation plans that should be tailored accordingly.  Let's discuss this.

Salespeople that are motivated by money are extrinsically motivated.  Salespeople who are motivated by something other than money are intrinsically motivated.  While neither is better or worse, the largest percentage of extrinsically motivated salespeople are in the top 5% of all salespeople.  A small percentage of salespeople are altruistically motivated and simply want to be of service. Generally speaking, that is the department they belong in - the Customer Service department.  The largest percentage of altruistically motivated salespeople are found in the bottom 10% of all salespeople.

The majority of both extrinsic and intrinsic salespeople are motivated and you can continue to motivate them, but compensation plans for each group should be appropriately tailored.  Intrinsically motivated salespeople don't want less money, they want more security from their base salary.  Extrinsically motivated salespeople don't need a larger base salary, they want the ability to maximize their earnings without a cap.

The most recent data from Objective Management Group (OMG) shows that only 23% of all salespeople are extrinsically motivated, down from 25% in 2017 and from 59% in 2005. Ironically, while most compensation plans are geared towards this group, the largest percentage of salespeople are intrinsic!

While the motivational style represents how salespeople are motivated, the motivational score tells us the degree to which salespeople are motivated.  The score varies slightly around the world as it is 93% in Latin America, 82% in Europe, 89% is Asia, 83% in Oceana, 95% in Africa, and 88% in the United States.

The score also varies by years of sales experience where, for the most part, years of sales experience correlates to age demographics.  For example, those with fewer than 3 years of sales experience are also those we expect to be younger salespeople where 84% of that group is motivated.  Surprisingly, that jumps to 89% for salespeople with more than 5 years of sales experience and holds steady through 30 years of sales experience. 

One other Competency score that changes based on experience/age is Commitment to sales success.  Only 56% of the salespeople with fewer than 3 years of experience are committed, but that jumps to 64% for those with 5-10 years of experience, 67% for those with 10-20 years of experience and up to 69% for those with 20-30 years of experience.

Why are the oldest and most experienced salespeople more committed?  If you have hired younger salespeople, you already know how unlikely they are to stick around for more than 1-2 years and how few of them succeed!

If you look at Commitment and Motivation by sales proficiency or percentile, Commitment and Motivation become even clearer.  100% of the top 10% of all salespeople are both committed and motivated.  Compare that to the bottom 10% where only 13% are committed and only 20% are motivated.  The top 10% are 606% more committed and motivated than the bottom 10%!  When we look at the weakest 50%, we learn that only 39% are committed and 76% are motivated.  As you can probably guess, motivation won't get the job done when a salesperson is not committed to sales success.

Understanding how a salesperson is motivated is the key to aligning your compensation plan, but knowing a salesperson's level of Commitment is one of the key competencies to predict sales performance and success.

Motivation and Commitment are two of the 21 Sales Core Competencies measured by OMG so when you use OMG's Sales Candidate Assessments these two important findings are no longer a hidden secret. 

You can see the average scores for all salespeople, the top 10% and the bottom 10% and you can also see the scores for your industry and even your company's sales team.

Free sample.

Free trial.

Contact Us to Get Started with our Help.

Get Started on your Own.

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The Sony PlayStation, Gorilla Glue, Aquafina, and The George Forman Grill were all introduced in 1994.  You've heard of those but have you heard of Vamp Nail Polish or KoronaPay?  They were also introduced in 1994.

Objective Management Group's Sales Candidate Assessment was also introduced in 1994 and while 35,000 or so companies are raving fans, that represents less than 1% of the potential B2B market.  As successful as OMG is, and as legendary as our sales candidate assessment is, the reality is that relative to the potential size of the market, hardly anyone uses it.

Isn't 28 years long enough for us to prove ourselves?  

Clearly OMG is not for everyone. Companies that sell at the lowest price, companies that are the brand leaders, and companies that have a transactional sale don't need to hire good salespeople because their salespeople are order-takers.  But what about everyone else?

After consistently proving its legendary predictive accuracy making it a no-brainer to use OMG, there are five possible reasons why companies didn't use OMG  to assess their sales candidates over the past 28 years:

1. They perceive OMG to be an inferior assessment.  I have never heard anyone say that and none of our partners have ever heard anyone say that but maybe some people feel this way and keep their thoughts to themselves.  In this day and age?  Are you kidding me?
   
   Based on all of the awards OMG has earned, its raving fans, and strong renewal rate, I don't believe this is ever the reason.
   
   
2. Sales Leaders and sometimes even HR Directors, believe their gut instinct, experience, skills and expertise can out-perform OMG.  While the science disproves this, it is a common reason as to why companies don't use OMG to hire salespeople.  Even worse, some Sales Leaders feel that if they have to rely on a tool to hire salespeople it will make them appear weak.  It's an ego problem. 
   
   One Sales Leader had turned over 50% of his sales team and the other 50% were underperforming.  He had failed to hit forecast for 4 consecutive quarters but instead of blaming it on sales selection and/or training and coaching, he was blaming the company's pricing model and didn't believe salespeople could succeed with the current pricing.  While the right salespeople would perform fine with their pricing model, he didn't know how to identify the right salespeople and wasn't willing to spend money on an assessment that would effectively do that.
   
   
3. "Legal" doesn't allow for the use of assessments.  Legal as a reason (LaaR) only occurs in large companies, and because the market is flooded with personality assessments that are not role specific or predictive.  Disgruntled candidates, who are not selected, could potentially blame their failure to land a job on a personality assessment, leaving companies potentially vulnerable to a law suit.  On the other hand, a role-specific assessment, like OMG, creates no such liability for a company so this line of thinking is very difficult to understand.  It's worth noting that Legal doesn't even get involved until either the CEO, HR Director and/or Sales Leader decides to utilize OMG. 
   
   One company was having trouble hiring 300 salespeople.  They had already hired 500 salespeople but 350 had quickly turned over and only 150 were actually selling for them.  They had a huge problem getting sales selection right so they gave OMG the verbal go-ahead but Legal put the kibosh on it.  The ill-conceived fear of a law suit outweighed the fact that their revenue generating car had its gears in reverse.  I think the weak CEO should have been fired for allowing legal to override his decision-making.
   
   
4. HR is married to another assessment and feels it would be too difficult to learn a new assessment.  As Dave Mantel pointed out, HR is measured on their cost per hire and time to hire; not on sales performance. Unfortunately, these HR professionals believe selecting the most accurate and predictive sales assessment is not as important as their level of comfort, even if it will make their job easier.
   
   Why use a personality assessment to determine if they have the sales capabilities required to succeed in a particular sales role at the company?  As Aaron Prickel of Lushin & Associates put it, "You wouldn't give your son a pregnancy test to determine if he's using drugs!"   
   
   
5. A Sales Candidate Assessment is not in the budget.  So?
   
   One company was paying their two worst salespeople a $60,000 base salary and those two salespeople were at 50% of quota.  In addition to the $120,000 the company was throwing out the window on two losers, they were failing to generate $1 million in revenue!  They needed to hire salespeople this year and only had to spend $7,500 with OMG to hire 6 ideal salespeople.  Somehow, they didn't have $7,500 to spend, but were OK throwing $120,000 out the window and accepting a $1 million short-fall.  Math does not seem to be a strong suit at this company.

Circling back to how the article began, isn't 28 years of helping companies improve their sales selection effectiveness a long enough trial to prove to the masses that OMG is a game changer for sales?  Consider these statistics:

Do you see it?  44% more salespeople achieve quota at companies that use OMG compared to companies that use another assessment, and 80% better than companies that don't use an assessment.  And sales attrition is 75% lower at companies that use OMG compared with companies that use another assessment and 237% lower than companies that don't use an assessment.  So much for gut instinct, experience, expertise and skills.

And this?  When a company hires a sales candidate that OMG doesn't recommend, 75% of those salespeople fail within 90 days.  When a company hires a sales candidate that OMG does recommend, 92% of those salespeople rise to the top half of their sales teams within 12 months.  So much for legal, ego, budgets, and comfort level.

There are 21 Sales Core Competencies, each with an average of 8 attributes, and OMG measures every single one of them.  Depending on the role, some attributes and competencies are more important than others.

Put science to work and rely on it to hire your next group of salespeople.

Request a sample Sales Candidate Assessment.  
Download free White Paper on Sales Selection.   
Begin a Free Trial

Let us know you want to Get Started. 

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Have you tried recruiting salespeople lately?

It's a lot like it was in 2019, pre-pandemic, only different.

From time to time, I help clients recruit for key roles.  Unlike recruiters, I don't work on a contingency because I take responsibility for the entire recruiting process from soup to nuts and then the client makes the decisions on who to hire.  They pay a fee for services.  I specify the requirements, write the job postings, attract and source candidates, take the initial application, get them through Objective Management Group's (OMG) accurate and predictive candidate assessments, review resumes, conduct the first interview and then recommend candidates who are perfect fits for the roles.

With that for context, consider these two contradicting projects.   I am helping one company find a single needle-in-a-haystack sales leadership candidate and it has taken nearly six months.  I am helping another company find 3 sales leaders and received 3,765 applications.  What's the difference?

For the answer to be meaningful, we have to look at the entire job market, not just sales candidates.

According to this Reuters article, while the number of new US jobs ticked upwards in October, the US labor force has four million fewer workers than in 2019.  That could explain both the shortage of candidates and the skewed unemployment numbers.  [Update - US jobs report from November shows sharp decline in new jobs created.]

Yet, according to this article in TheBalance, there are still 7.4 million workers in the US who are unemployed.  7.4 unemployed plus 4 million fewer workers means that 11.4 million workers are at home despite there being reports of 10 million available jobs!

And according to this post from Statistica.com, the unemployment rate in the US has dropped by only 2.3% in the past 12 months.

The Wall St. Journal said that nearly 20 million US workers resigned during the spring and summer of 2021.

At the same time, this post from Statistica.com shows that there are nearly 2 million MORE workers in the US than in 2019!

And finally, this article from Verizon.com says that there are more than 91 million people in the US who are not working.

So if we combine all of these data points and place them in the context of hiring salespeople, we can draw some interesting conclusions:

The candidates may or may not be currently working.  They may have temporarily retired, be working but ready to leave for a better offer, or not looking to leave at all.

They are out there, but they are being flaky.  29% of the candidates who applied for the jobs I posted did not respond to calls, texts or emails, and 31% of the group that did respond would not take the time to complete online applications and assessments.

I looked at the variables for the two companies I was helping.  I was able to eliminate a lot of them because I was running both campaigns, used the same job sites, used similar job postings, engaged the same way, made the same two asks up front, and conducted similar video interviews.  The only two variables that were different were location and compensation.

There was MUCH more interest in the opportunity where remote or an hour from a major airport were the criteria, as compared to the requirements of a specific locale and in-office presence.

Base salaries were NOT factors but there was MUCH more interest when total compensation exceeded $200,000-$300,000 as compared with total compensation that would reach $100,000-$200,000.  

So sales, sales management and sales leadership candidates are fickle right now, will apply if the total compensation is a no-brainer, and if they don't have to commute to an office.  Otherwise, they'll stay where they are or stay home.

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We were driving on the highway when the dashboard indicated low pressure in the left rear tire.  That can't be good!  As we exited the highway eight miles later, the tire was flat and we were able to drive another mile to a safe location and call roadside assistance.  Until that moment, I wasn't aware that the car did not have a spare tire but was equipped with a tire inflation repair kit instead.  Roadside assistance told us that the lack of a spare tire meant the car would be towed to their nearest dealer.

There are typically three possibilities when you have a flat tire:

1. Change the tire if you have a spare and know how to do it or have roadside do it for you
2. Use the tire inflation repair kit and keep the tire inflated long enough to get to your mechanic
3. Get towed.

In my opinion, getting towed is the worst possible option and the last thing we want to deal with and in the waning days of a pandemic, they'll take your car but not you, so that doesn't solve anything.  Your car is still broken, you are still stranded, and you are temporarily separated from your beloved vehicle.

When salespeople get into trouble and an opportunity stalls out or goes off the rails, their sales managers are the sales version of roadside assistance.  In the context of a sales opportunity, there are typically three possibilities:

1. Change the tire - put another salesperson on the opportunity
2. Repair the tire - the salesperson does enough damage control to keep the opportunity alive until they can get coaching from their sales manager
3. Call Roadside and the sales manager calls or shows up to get the opportunity back on track if possible

If you agree that a tow would be your last possible option, then it should follow that a rescue from a sales manager would be equally bad.  The prospect loses respect for the salesperson and will only speak with the sales manager after the rescue. Salespeople learn to lean on and use their sales managers as crutches, salespeople never become strong enough to handle these situations on their own, and sales managers fail to develop strong teams.

According to Objective Management Group (OMG) and their assessments on more than two million salespeople, sales managers and sales leaders, only 18% of all sales managers are well-suited for the role and only 7% are actually good at coaching. We know from this article on being an underdog in sales that the bottom half of all salespeople totally suck.

When you combine those three pathetic data points, there are a few insights that pop to the surface.

Most sales managers are a lot better at selling than they are at managing and coaching and are at their best when salespeople call for roadside assistance.  That explains their universal desire to accept those calls without pushing back, coaching and challenging their salespeople to do better.  Salespeople improve when they have no choice but to improve!

Most sales managers actually believe it's their job to be the hero and that is one of the biggest impediments to developing strong salespeople.

There are far more salespeople whose opportunities go off the rails and need help but who end up following one of three even worse scenarios than calling their sales managers:

1. At the time, they lacked the situational awareness to realize the opportunity went sideways on them so they follow up as if nothing bad happened.
2. They realized the opportunity was going sideways but chose to use the tire repair kit instead of calling for roadside assistance
3. They knew it went sideways but lacked the commitment to call for roadside or use the tire repair kit and simply gave up.

These scenarios play out every day, on every sales team, at every company, all over the world.  Isn't it time to raise the bar on both sales mangers and salespeople, train them up, coach them up, and stop accepting so much mediocrity?

Join me on October 26 for a free 45-minute introduction to Baseline Selling and learn how to avoid the mistakes that most salespeople make, shorten your sales cycle, differentiate from the competition, and improve your win rate.  Register here.

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We are finally doing things we haven't done for quite a while including dining inside restaurants, flying, staying in hotels, going to and hosting parties, attending packed stadiums for sporting events and more.  Something else we haven't done for quite a while is revisit Objective Management Group's (OMG) sales selection statistics on the percentage of people that are recommended for various selling and sales management roles.

The last time we looked at recommendation data was in 2014!  In the seven years since we have seen a sluggish economy (2014-2016) with lots of candidates to choose from, a robust economy where candidates were very difficult to find and attract (mid-2017 to early 2020), a non-existent economy hammered by COVID (2nd quarter 2020- through the 1st quarter of 2021) with a decent supply of good candidates, and now back to a robust economy with good candidates scarce once again (2nd quarter 2021).

I was interested to learn how the recent recommendation data compared with the recommendation data from seven years ago.

First, let's define what a recommendation means.

Every OMG sales, sales management and sales leadership assessment has some criteria that is set in stone, some that varies with the difficulty of the role, and some that is client-side specific.  Candidates must meet the criteria in all three areas to be recommended.  Good salespeople are sometimes not recommended for certain roles because they aren't a good fit while mediocre salespeople are sometimes recommended for certain roles because they are a great fit.  It's too complicated to get into customization criteria in an article like this but the goal of OMG's candidate assessment is to get the right people into the right roles and there is a huge difference between all the possible selling roles in all the companies in all the industries where OMG assessments are utilized.

To get a sense for differences, even in the same industry, please refer to this article.

OMG allows five levels of difficulty for its sales roles, three for its sales management roles, and two for its sales leadership roles.  To give you a sense for how those difficulty levels differ, consider the following examples:

• Little to No Difficulty - salesperson checks stock, fills stock with order updates.  An order-taker.
• Some Difficulty - industrial sales of supplies used in maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) A better order-taker.
• Moderate Difficulty - government sales, mostly bid work, but selling the reason to choose you at a higher price.
• Considerable Difficulty - 6 or 7 figure consultative sale of capital equipment against formidable competition.
• Significant Difficulty - 6 and 7 figure consultative sale of services to the C Suite in a long sales cycle competing against formidable competition

Now that you have some context for the difficulty levels, let's take a look at the before and after data and.

                                               2014                                                                                  2021

So what are the noteworthy changes?

The percentage of candidates being recommended for the most difficult and challenging sales roles has almost doubled!!  That's right.  Two exclamation points on that one.  Unfortunately, it doesn't mean that there are more strong candidates than seven years ago, but it does mean that companies are improving their ability to target and attract the good salespeople into their candidate pool.

Similarly, a higher percentage of sales managers are being recommended at the higher levels.  As with sales candidates, I attribute this to better targeting and attraction tactics.

The percentage of sales leadership candidates being recommended has dropped - a lot.  There are a lot more sales leadership candidates out there today than in 2014 and most of the candidates don't meet the significantly higher bar that exists for sales leaders today.

Finally, some HR and Sales Leaders are horrified and all recruiters are pissed when so many of their candidates are not recommended.  But isn't that why you choose an accurate and predictive assessment like OMG in the first place?  You choose OMG to AVOID making the mistake of hiring someone who can sell but won't,  who sounds good but isn't, who sells you but doesn't sell anyone else, or who simply isn't a good fit for the role.

Check out OMG's accurate and predictive sales candidate assessments.

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