Just before dark each day a Fox visits our property and drives our dog, Dinger, crazy.  If you don't know Dinger, you can learn about his listening skills in this article.

Last week, the Fox stole Dinger's green ball, brought it home to his own family, and that really pissed off Dinger!  My wife and I have both scared the Fox away but he's a creature of habit and he continues to appear at the same time each day.

Speaking of creatures of habit, there's Bob, and he's up to his old tricks.  If you don't know who Bob is, you can learn about his sales misadventures in this article on not properly selling a trial, and this article about not selling value.  Both articles are of the must-read variety.

So what did Bob do to piss me off this week? 

Bob has a great opportunity with a large tech firm that is prepared to spend around $200,000 over two years.  He was given permission to offer a 10% discount if they prepay the total, bringing their investment down to only $180,000.  Most big companies that are flush with cash have a mandate to take discounts so it's highly unlikely that they would pass up a $20,000 discount.  So Bob should be able to close this deal, right?  Right?  Ah, not really.  This is Bob we're talking about!

Bob pushed back on his VP of Sales suggesting that if it's a two-year deal, the client should be able to make a $90,000 payment in 2021 and another $90,000 payment in 2022.  In demanding this concession, Bob creates two new problems for himself and his company:

1. He wants to provide them with payment terms over two years AND offer the pre-payment discount.  This would eliminate the option to compromise and drop back to two-year terms if they don't want to pay for the entire deal up front.  Why would Bob do that with a multi-billion dollar company?  The answer is, Money Tolerance.  According to the data from Objective Management Group (OMG) and their evaluations and assessments of 2,056,067 salespeople, it's a weakness that 32% of all salespeople have. See the table below.
   
   If we look more closely at this weakness, we can see that the majority of salespeople that have Money Tolerance as a weakness fall into the category of salespeople who are weak - those who make up the bottom 50% - where half of that group have Money Tolerance as a weakness.  That occurs when the amount of money being discussed seems like an awful lot of money.
   
   
2. If the client wants to cancel after the first year, all they have to do is refuse to make the second payment, in which case this becomes a one-year $90,000 deal instead of a two-year $180,000-$200,000 deal.  Why would Bob allow that to happen?  He's uncomfortable having any discussion at all about money.  Look at that table above again and you can see that only 40% of all salespeople are comfortable having a financial conversation and when it comes to the bottom half of all salespeople - and Bob is clearly in the bottom half - 85% are uncomfortable!  

It is worth noting that more than 90% of elite salespeople - those who make up the top 5% - are both comfortable talking about money and have high money tolerance.  It's no wonder they're in the top 5%!  They are 631% more effective than weak salespeople when it comes to talking about money!

Even strong salespeople - the next 15% - have their challenges when it comes to talking about money.  Comfortable Talking About Money is one of six sales core competencies that make up a salesperson's Sales DNA and one of twenty-one sales core competencies that OMG measures.  You can see some of the data for all twenty-one competencies here, as well as sort them by industry and see how your own salespeople compare!

Bob can be coached on what to ask, what to say, and how to say it, but we all know what will happen when Bob has the next conversation with this client.  If the client pushes back even a little, Bob will cave and offer what HE feels is reasonable instead of what his sales manager expects from him.   That brings us to the next obvious issue.  Bob's sales manager sucks!  You can read about sucky sales managers here and the follow up to that article here.

Bob's sales manager hasn't been effective coaching - no surprise - and has been equally ineffective at holding Bob accountable for doing things the right way, upholding terms, becoming more effective, and implementing the coaching.  Bob. Doesn't. Change.  If Bob's sales manager has accepted that and/or given up, then he is guilty of failing to terminate Bob so that he can upgrade his sales team.

When both the salesperson and the sales manager are equally weak, it is a formula for significant under-performance.  It doesn't have to be that way though.  Sales Managers who aren't as sucky as Bob's sales manager can attend my annual public (virtual) Sales Leadership Intensive, make themselves better, become more effective at coaching, and learn how to coach up and fix the Bobs of the world.  Learn more here.  Register here.

Before I can make any predictions for 2020, let's start with these ten simple truths about selling for proper context.

ONE:  Selling is not as difficult or as simple as many would have you understand.  

TWO: While there are certainly nuances that influence how selling changes based on the target audience and complexity, selling is essentially the same whether it is technology, pharmaceuticals, capital equipment, financial services, cars, components, accounting or any of 200 other industries.

THREE: Selling is about opening people's minds, changing people's minds, and getting them to take action.

FOUR: Effective Selling requires a well thought-out sales strategy, sales process, sales methodology and appropriate sales tactics.

FIVE: Salespeople can be easily sabotaged by weak Sales DNA.

SIX: One skill that all salespeople must have is the ability to lower resistance.

SEVEN: Salespeople must be likable and trustworthy.

EIGHT: Salespeople must be willing work hard.

NINE: Salespeople must be motivated enough to overcome challenges, competition, negativity and difficult prospects.

TEN: Salespeople must be fearless.

Regular readers know that my company, Objective Management Group (OMG), has evaluated 

1,927,898 salespeople from companies.  We measure 21 Sales specific Core Competencies which you can learn more about here.

With the context firmly in place, we can discuss my predictions for 2020.

CRM - Every senior executive I speak with is frustrated with their investments in mainstream CRM. No exceptions.  If they bought Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics, or Oracle, they have salespeople who hate it, have to be nagged to update it, don't use it at all, and worst of all, they aren't getting the realtime insights or views into the actual pipeline that prompted the investment in the first place.  I think this is the year that companies finally begin pulling the plug and cutting their losses on the big CRM applications, and start over with smaller, sales-specific opportunity and pipeline focused applications.  I believe that any company that wants their sales process, complete with dynamic playbook and scorecards fully integrated into CRM should choose Membrain.

VILT - More companies will choose Virtual Instructor Led Training despite the evidence that live, interactive sales training is far more effective.  Why?  VILT is much less expensive!  But it might be several years before companies recognize that just like CRM, going the way of the popular trend doesn't move the needle on sales and profits and will eventually result in a wasted investment in the wrong training.  Selling can be taught via VILT, but it must be demonstrated over and over until salespeople can execute what they learned.  That means live role-playing and not scripted actors. Your salespeople must be able to play the part of the difficult prospect that they face each day and challenge the trainer to have the realtime conversation that will change minds.  It simply isn't possible with VILT. 

AI - Artificial Intelligence will continue to grow in popularity and acceptance because, once again, the sellers of AI say it's the next thing you must have.  AI can be very helpful automating tasks on the marketing side, where bots might be able to replace salespeople when it comes to conversations via email. But if you have a complex sale, the last thing in the world that you would want is to substitute a bot for a skilled salesperson! 

Evaluations and Assessments -  As with CRM, I think this is the year that companies will realize that you must use pre-employment assessments for effective sales selection.  I believe that they will finally come to recognize that personality assessments and behavioral styles assessments aren't predictive of sales success.  Objective Management Group (OMG), winner of the Gold Medal for the Top Sales Assessment eight consecutive years, leads the way in accurate and predictive sales-specific candidate assessments but for every one of the 29,000 companies that use OMG, there are 172 that don't (of five million B2B companies).  I don't know if it is naivety, ignorance, stubbornness or stupidity, but there is plenty of science that suggests this must change.

Consider this graphic. 

In the graphic above, only 49% of reps achieve quota at companies that don't use pre-employment assessments.  That increases to 61% at companies that do use pre-employment assessments, and 88% at companies that use OMG's accurate and predictive Sales Candidate Assessments.

The same holds true for turnover.  It's 19% when companies don't use pre-employment assessments, 14% when they do, and only 8% when they use OMG.  That's why OMG has won the gold for 8 consecutive years!

Growth: The economy is booming and the only question is whether your salespeople can outsell your competition.  For each opportunity your salespeople work on in 2020, only one company will have the lowest price. If that's not you, then you must become really effective at selling value.  This is the year that companies will become serious about making that happen, investing in sales training that stresses a consultative and value based approach, grounded in sales process.

Change: Sales leaders and sales managers will have to do better in 2020 but how can we reach them?  If you look at those who follow these important hashtags on LinkedIn, it seems that the people who could make a difference are missing in action:

#salesleadership 5,067

#salesleader 268

#salesleaders 367

#salesmanagement 9,054

#salesmanager 3,046

#salesmanagers 608

#salesprocess 4,651

#salespipeline 121

In a great 2020 economy, companies will have the cash to make smart decisions, invest in quality training and tools, and coach up their salespeople to beat the competition but it will take engaged, proactive sales leaders to make it happen!

What do you think?  Leave your comments on the LInkedIn discussion for this article.

Image Copyright iStock Photos

During our very first conversation with a CEO, the talking path is determined by whether their company is analog or digital.  

Digital companies are typically on the cutting edge in their thinking and actions, their CEO's read content like this, are active on LinkedIn and Twitter, they are aware that selling has changed dramatically, they already have inside sales teams, playbooks, demo decks, sales enablement, online tools beyond CRM and in true digital fashion, they live by their KPI's which count the elements of their work flow.

Analog companies are old school. Analog salespeople still pound the phones to find opportunities, and visit their prospects to close sales. Their CEO's may have a LinkedIn account, but it probably isn't used much, they don't tweet, read online content like this, and most importantly, have little clue about how dramatically selling has changed in the past 5 years.  They may not be aware of the migration to inside sales, typically make little use of selling tools, don't know what a sales playbook is, and in true analog fashion, measure work product, not flow.  

The difference between work flow in a digital company versus work product in the analog company is dramatic too.

Work flow represents a series or flow of actions.  With inbound marketing for example, a company might use a combination of landing pages, email templates and rules to generate the flow of contacts, leads and opportunities, all of which are counted.

Work product represents outcomes.  Analog companies are more likely to measure how hard their salespeople work. Analog versus digital. Counting versus measuring. 

Digital companies usually think that they have it all figured out because they read free content like this, make use of the latest tools, have millennials working their inbound marketing effort, have inside and outside sales, hire expensive sales leaders, and together they built a sales machine.  But when it's not generating enough revenue, the sales machine is broken.

Analog companies aren't really aware that they are old school, but they have recognized that what used to work doesn't appear to be generating the same results today.  Their salespeople struggle to close new business, they are losing important accounts, margins are slipping because their salespeople are unable sell value, and their veteran salespeople are in denial.  Their ability to generate sales by pounding the phones and managing their territories has become inefficient and ineffective.  You can even recognize an analog sales force by looking at them.  With rare exceptions, it's a group of fat, aging, white guys.

In the end, it simply doesn't matter whether a company is analog or digital.  The commonality between them is that their sales organizations are not bringing in enough business and there are several reasons for this - or more!

One of the many reasons for less than stellar revenue is that these companies - both analog and digital - often fail to hire the right salespeople for the role.  That's the easiest of all things in sales to correct.  A simple change to your selection criteria and an accurate and predictive sales tool will drive up your rate of success and consistency with hiring very quickly!

If you are interested in learning how we use *digital magic* to help companies hire the right salespeople, then you might enjoy spending 30 minutes with me next month.  On September 28, I will lead a fast-paced behind the scenes online tour of the magic behind OMG's award-winning sales selection tools.  You can join me by registering here.

When our son was just beginning to speak and we did something that he really enjoyed, he would say, "Again!  Again!"  

Two years ago, I wrote about a sales selection experiment with a group of college kids and the results were so much fun to read that when they repeated the exercise this year, my first reaction was, "Again!"  I think you're going to really enjoy the conclusions from this year's class!

First, you'll need the back story and results from the first go around and don't worry - it was an extremely short article!

Now that you are familiar with the premise and the first set of results, we must ask whether or not the results will be similar, the same or completely different.  The setup was the same - 5 teams - organized by their scores, and they set out to sell overpriced encyclopedias to homeowners in upscale neighborhoods.  Here are my conclusions from this year:

The students with the highest scores for Commitment to Sales Success sold five times more books than the students with the lowest scores for Commitment.  Once again we see why Commitment is the most important finding.

The team with the highest scores for Desire for Sales Success had both the best win rate and the most wins, but also had the fewest door knocks.  While strong Desire is always a requirement, Desire alone is not enough!

The two teams with the lowest scores for Desire for Sales Success and the lowest Sales DNA / Sales Quotient tied for the lowest win rate and fewest books sold.

The student who had the highest combined scores for Desire and Commitment had the highest win rate and the most books sold.

The five students with the lowest scores for Commitment and the most doors knocked had a combined win rate of 0.  Did they lie about the number of doors they knocked on or simply knock and fail to do what was required after that?

The seven students, or 28%, with the highest combination of Desire and Commitment closed 19 of the 32 sales.

The three students, or 13%, with the highest combination of Sales DNA and Sales Quotient scores closed 5, or 20%, of the 32 sales.

Neither Sales Quotient nor Sales DNA by themselves are enough.  The five who scored highest on each of those scores closed only 6 of the 32 sales.  They must be accompanied by Desire and Commitment!

This study also proved that numbers alone aren't enough to get it done.  The ten students who knocked on the most doors closed only 7 of the 32 sales.

 

 

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