As a Nor'Easter barreled across Central Massachusetts today, a few interesting storm-related happenings were analogous to some sales-related occurrences. This article will explore two weather-related analogies:

1. It's in 3D - Dinger the Dog and his choice of Doors
2. The Magic of Weather Apps

I've written about Dinger, our six-year-old Golden Doodle, several times.  The most popular article was when I claimed and proved that Dinger's listening skills were better than those of salespeople. 

At the onset of the storm Dinger went out to do his business and got soaked.  When he's ready to come back into the house, he usually looks in the windows to see which room we are in, and whether that's in the front of the house or the back of the house he goes to a front or back door and knocks just like we do.  Knock-knock-knock. He knew he was soaked so he went to the side door, which opens into a room with a tile floor, where we dry him with a towel.  A new trick - he knew which door to use based on the weather!

Dinger is smarter than so many salespeople who regularly use the wrong doors.   Some salespeople use the back door which leads to the warehouse.  Others use the front door which leads directly to reception and procurement.  Some use the side door which brings them to business users and middle management.  But the best salespeople, the top 10%, use the private entrance which leads to the C Suite.  If you had to rank the doors in order of importance, regardless of what you are selling, it would be:

1. The Private Entrance - this is where decisions - about everything - are made.  Worst case, you get a top-down introduction to someone who deals with what you sell.  I remember the first time that happened to me around 40 years ago.  The CEO, who I didn't know, introduced me to the VP Sales, who I didn't know.  I wasn't very impressive and was really young but that Sales VP felt pressured to do business with me by what he perceived to be a strong relationship between me and the CEO.  Which is easier and more powerful - fighting your way up or getting introduced on your way down?
2. The Warehouse - There are only two reasons to enter the warehouse.  Either you are looking for door number 2 - the entrance to the Plant Manger's office, or you are talking with people working in the plant to identify issues that you can use in a meeting with the VP of Manufacturing or the VP of Engineering after the CEO introduces them to you.
3. The Side Door - I can't think of a good reason to enter through the side door because users and middle managers don't have the authority to say anything except, "looks good," "we'll let you know," and "No."
4. The Front Entrance - The only thing worse than the side door is the door that delivers you to the official gatekeepers of the kingdom and of course, procurement.  If you are selling the right way, you might end up in procurement to formalize terms, and get sign-off on a Purchase Order. You must never begin in Procurement unless you simply offer no value, have the lowest price, and are selling large quantities of a low priced product. When people write about the death of selling, that's really a phrase about where salespeople go to die.  Procurement.

47% of salespeople reach decision makers but 90% of the best salespeople reach decision makers while only 5% of the worst salespeople reach decision makers.  Do you think there is a correlation?  What about causation?  Damn straight.

The storm caused me to regularly check the weather apps.  Apps plural because for some reason, despite having access to the exact same data, they all predict something completely different.  My four apps of choice were:

1. Accuweather  predicted 12-18 inches of snow
2. Weather.com  predicted 4-8 inches of snow
3. Apple Weather (formerly Dark Sky) predicted an inch of mixed precipitation
4. Fox Weather predicted 2 inches of rain and sleet.

Post Storm Note: We received 3 inches of snow Weather.com came the closest - this time.

Could four forecasts be more different and confusing?  Forecasting winter weather in New England is tricky and the difference between rain, snow, ice and mixed precipitation can sometimes come down to the center of the storm tracking a few more miles east or west of the original storm track.

Weather forecasts are the same as forecasting a sale. 

There is your personal sales forecast, which by nature will be overly optimistic as you'll have it closing sooner than it actually will, and for more money than you'll actually get.  But lost in your forecast are the three forecasts from your three competitors.  They too will forecast a win and unlike the weather apps, which all have the potential to get the forecast correct, only one of your forecasts will be accurate.  Only one of four can win - a 25% chance of being right. 

And you're going to win this because why?  They like you better?  You have a strong relationship?  You have a better product?  You have a better price?  You have faster delivery?  You have a better reputation?  You have better references?  You've been around longer?  Your quality is better?

Who cares about that stuff other than you?  If those were truly the difference makers you would win every deal, every single time.  But you don't win every deal, do you? 

The question isn't "why not?"  The question is why are your forecasts wrong?

Most of the time, sales forecasts fail to take into consideration the following:

• If the salesperson entered through the correct door - are they talking with THE decision maker as opposed to A decision maker or influencer?
• Was there a compelling reason for the prospect to take action and is there a compelling reason to buy from you instead of the competition?
• Was the salesperson effective enough selling value so that the prospect will spend more to buy from you?
• Was the opportunity thoroughly qualified?

While 28% of salespeople are strong qualifiers, 77% of the best salespeople are strong qualifiers and 0% of the worst salespeople are strong qualifiers.  ZERO!  Do you think there is a correlation?  What about causation? 

Think like Dinger and use four weather apps, become a strong consultative seller and a strong qualifier, and your sales effectiveness will improve drastically!

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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A sales consultant who knows that I geek out on sales data read that 84% of salespeople suck because they don't enjoy what they do.  A huge percentage of salespeople do actually suck but the actual number is closer to 75%.  Is it really because they don't enjoy selling?

Most of the data I write about comes from Objective Management Group which has assessed more than 2.3 million salespeople.  OMG has around 250 data points on each salesperson so there is a lot of data to work with.  My plan was to mine OMG's data to see what might support the claim that 84% don't enjoy selling and to conduct a Google search to find the source of that claim.

I began with Google and searched for "84% of salespeople."  While I couldn't find a reference to unfulfilled salespeople, I did observe that 84% must be the favorite made up statistic by all of the people (those who will benefit from selling you a service) who make up statistics!  

• 84% of B2B Buyers start the buying process with a referral (nope.  They start with who they usually buy from)
• 84% of salespeople are active on LinkedIn (not a chance in hell - it's more like 5%)
• 84% of top salespeople crush their sales goals because they are smarter (sorry - it's because they reach decision makers, thoroughly Qualify, have strong Sales DNA, and take a consultative approach to selling)
• 84% of salespeople have invested in CRM (nope - their companies are investing in CRM and based on OMG's data, only 42% of salespeople use it)
• 84% of salespeople at businesses that have adopted professional sales enablement strategies are reaching their goals (No company anywhere has 84% of their salespeople reaching their goals unless the goals were lowered so that everyone could receive a participation trophy)
• 84% of salespeople think their 3-month onboarding training was ineffective (not completely surprising but not nearly that high)
• 84% of salespeople will miss their performance targets for the year (Not. This varies from 47%-57% every year)
• 84% of sales teams are more productive selling from home (if it's from not driving around all day the number should be 100%)
• 84% of salespeople like being recognized for their performance (not even close.  OMG's data says it is 21%)
• 84% of top performers ask for commitments (This is so far off.  OMG's data shows this number to be 27% for the top 20% of all salespeople)
• 84% of top salespeople rank high in achievement orientation/goal setting (OMG's data has it as 72% for the top 20%)
• 84% of sales training is forgotten within 2 years (it's a made up number and probably closer to 50%)

The references to 84% continue but let's go back to the claim that 84% of all salespeople are not fulfilled in their sales roles.

OMG measures 21 Sales Core Competencies with an average of 10 attributes for each. Some directly and/or loosely correlate to fulfillment.  If 84% are not fulfilled we would convert that to a positive and say that 16% are fulfilled.  Here is the real data:

• 55% of all salespeople Enjoy Selling and this goes up to 78% for the top 10% and down to 23% for the bottom 10% but their number is supposed to represent all salespeople and that isn't close to 16%.
• 62% of all salespeople have a strong Outlook and feel good about themselves and what they do.  This goes up to 75% for the top 10% and down to 40% for the bottom 10%.
• 61% of all salespeople are highly Motivated.  This goes up to 89% for the top 10% and down to 12% for the bottom 10%
• 3.5% of all salespeople feel that selling isn't fun.  This goes down to .5% for the top 10% and up to 38% for the bottom 10%.

In conclusion, the majority of salespeople feel good about selling, enjoy it, and are motivated to do it. There is a direct correlation between fulfillment and the percentile in which a salespeople find themselves.  Better and more successful salespeople find more fulfillment in sales than weaker and less successful salespeople.  While that shouldn't surprise anyone, 84% of salespeople lacking fulfillment is not to be believed.

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It's been four months since the baseball season ended but college baseball begins in less than 4 weeks and it will be fun to watch our son play for his college team (while freezing our asses off!).  It's also been a while since the last time I shared a top/bottom analysis but I completed one this week that I had to share.

For new readers, a company's top three performers are compared to the bottom three under-performers in one or more selling roles.  Our analysis identifies the specific scores and findings that differentiate the tops from the bottoms and proves that Objective Management Group (OMG) can differentiate ideal sales candidates from undesirable candidates for a particular selling role at that company.  It can be used as a proof of concept or as a set of custom criteria to further improve predictive accuracy.

The following image is a screen shot of the analysis.

We identified 45 scores and findings that differentiated the tops from the bottoms. The biggest contrast was between the top salesperson and the worst salesperson where the top salesperson scored 2500% higher (100 and 4) than the worst salesperson.

Some differences are the result of not understanding which selling experiences are crucial to a salesperson's success.  For example, the salespeople who were failing had not previously called on management, had never asked for more than $250,000, had not worked on a commission-heavy compensation plan, and were not well-suited for working remotely.  Those four differences do not require training or coaching to fix, but do require a change in selection criteria.

Huge differences were seen in three of the five competencies included in Will to Sell including Desire for Sales Success, Takes Responsibility and Sales Motivation.  You can't measure those competencies in an interview and if you try you will be fooled every time because you'll mistake them for either enthusiasm or lack thereof.  There are more competencies you can't measure in an interview and their top performers easily outscored their bottoms in five of the six competencies found in Sales DNA, the combination of strengths required to support the execution of sales process, sales methodology, sales strategy, sales tactics.

The top performers outscored the bottom performers by a significant margin in seven of ten tactical selling competencies, with the biggest gaps found in Sales Process and Reaching Decision Makers.

What does the disparity look like at your company?

Would a complimentary proof of concept help to justify using OMG's Sales Candidate Assessments for sales selection at your company?  Would it help you to see how accurate our sales team evaluation would be?  We've been conducting top/bottom analyses for 14 of our 33 years and we can do one for you too.  

Use this link to our, "Ask a Sales Expert" request form.  Copy and past the next line into the "Question" field on that form:

I am requesting a complimentary top/bottom analysis

Someone will contact you to arrange for your complimentary top/bottom analysis.

You're driving down the highway and you approach a road sign which says Chicago (South), Green Bay (North). Smart people know that taking the appropriate exit puts you on the road TO one of those cities and that you are NOT IN one of those cities.  Morons think they have arrived.

The sales version of that occurrence is the single most common challenge we observe when watching salespeople "sell." It doesn't matter whether it's a live phone call, virtual meeting, face-to-face meeting, or recorded sales call.  Salespeople who are learning to take a consultative approach to selling hear a stated issue - the consultative selling version of a road sign - but think they have arrived at their destination - the compelling reason to buy.

This is supported by the data.  Objective Management Group (OMG) has data on 2,280,260 salespeople that have been assessed from more than 30,000 companies.  The findings are horrific:

As you can see, even the top 5% don't excel at taking a consultative approach to selling with an average score of 66.  That's not bad, but these elite salespeople score at or near 100 on most of the other 21 Sales Core Competencies.  Only 13% percent of all salespeople are strong at taking a consultative approach while almost nobody in the bottom 50% is strong at this competency.  Signs, whether on the road or on a sales call, point to a path or direction. They do not announce your arrival.

Speaking of signs and data, I would like to share some sales candidate assessment data from six clients.  I'm sharing these because the data provides signs that point to certain paths or, in this case, reasons for the data.

The first column represents the number of candidates assessed in the past 12 months.  As you can see, the client who assessed 417 candidates was much more effective attracting candidates into the pool than the client who assessed 19 candidates.

The second column represents the percentage of candidates that met the specific criteria for success in their specific selling role(s), at their companies, selling to their audience, against their competition, and at their price points.  As you can see, the recommendation rate varied wildly because the criteria for a recommendation is dependent on the specific criteria for success in the role, as well as the difficulty of the role. Additionally, the quality of the candidates varies based on the appeal of the job posting and more specifically, total compensation.

The fourth column represents the percentage of candidates who were not recommended for each company. It's important to note that a candidate who is not recommended is not by default a bad salesperson.  Not recommended means that the salesperson didn't meet either OMG's criteria for the difficulty level and/or the client's criteria for success in the role.  It's possible that good salespeople may not be good fits and you shouldn't have to ask why.  How many salespeople have you hired, confident that they were good, only to see them fail?  Maybe they weren't good, or maybe they weren't good fits.  You could have known in advance had you used OMG.

The third column represents sales candidates that were worthy of consideration.  Worthies are on the cusp. They fall within a few percentage points of the cutoff separating those who were recommended from those who were not. The companies with 119 and 417 candidates with recommendation rates of 27% and 21%, didn't need to consider sales candidates who were worthy because they had plenty of recommended candidates to choose from.  However, the clients with 20, 19 and 74 candidates only had 11 recommended candidates between them so they needed to consider the additional 40 combined worthy sales candidates.

The client in the sixth row ran a job posting that attracted candidates, but not the right candidates. It wasn't tied closely enough to the criteria required for success in the role.  Compare that with the clients in the first and fifth rows who attracted only 39 candidates combined.  Their ads and/or their compensation likely sucked because most candidates were not moved to apply.

The data always takes the form of a road sign and tells you where to go to reach your intended destination.

This weekend, a deer ran across the highway and hit our car.  The deer was injured but she did manage to run away so we were relieved that she wasn't killed.  After we returned home, I couldn't find our dog, Dinger.  Regular readers may remember Dinger from these posts:

My Dog Has Better Listening Skills Than Most Salespeople 

Top Salespeople are 631% More Effective at This Than Weak Salespeople

How Top Salespeople Manage Resistance

Which Salespeople are Easier to Train - Veteran Salespeople or Millennials?

I found Dinger with his nose glued to my front bumper where some of the deer's hair was still attached to my car.  Dinger, who loves to bark at deer from the safety of our home, seemed to be saying, "Ohhhh, so THIS is what a deer smells like!"

The exact same thing happened to a salesperson I was training.  It wasn't a deer or a dog, it was about Jim's sales aha moment.

His team was asked to send me an email with their five biggest lessons from their first six months of training.  Among Jim's top five was this one:

Your own bias affects the selling process - Wow!  I did not realize that my biases are affecting my sales process and approaches.  For example, I have a money bias that was unknown to me until recently.  I make a strange face (as if I am going to get punched in the face) whenever I tell the client the cost for a service or product.  I started noticing my strange face recently on my zoom calls and I now know that my money bias was likely affecting my sales.  I was not confident in my ask for the cost of the service or the product and thus it showed on my face as I waited for the client's rebuttal.  (And usually their rebuttal would feel like they punched me in the face)

What a great lesson!  Jim was referring to a sales competency found in his Sales DNA called Comfortable Discussing Money and an attribute called High Money Tolerance found in another competency, Supportive Buy Cycle. 

Salespeople who don't have high money tolerance become very uncomfortable when the amount of money being discussed exceeds the amount they consider to be a lot of money.  Jim believed that $500 is a lot of money yet he was asking companies for $500,000.  No wonder he made a strange face - that's 1,000 times greater than his choking point!  If the salesperson lacks confidence in how much money they are asking for, why in the world would we expect the prospect to have any confidence about buying from the salesperson?

The top 10% of all salespeople are 4,000% more comfortable discussing money than the weakest 10% - 4,000%!  And the top 10% of all salespeople are 100% more likely to have a high money tolerance than the weakest 10%.

Finally, being comfortable discussing money and having a high money tolerance directly support a salesperson's ability to uncover the actual budget.  Salespeople who do uncover the actual budget are 172% more likely to close the business - 172%!

Objective Management Group (OMG) measures 21 Sales Core Competencies and has assessed more than 2.2 million salespeople.  You can view some of the data here, see how the data changes by industry, and how you and/or your sales team compares to other companies in your industry and overall.

I heard from Bob last week and whenever I hear from him it usually means he got himself into a jam with another sales opportunity.  Regular readers are familiar with Bob, one of the worst salespeople on the planet.  New readers might want to catch up on the six prior articles about Bob.

Part 1 
Part 2 
Part 3 
Part 4 
Part 5 
Part 6 

So what did Bob get himself into this time?

It's a huge opportunity that Bob has been nurturing for years and several months ago his prospect, a top executive that has the influence and authority to make a decision, confided that he would like to find a way to do business and not only that, have this be part of his legacy. 

Good salespeople would discuss the scope of work next but Bob sent samples, conducted demos and walk-throughs, and another two months passed.  Then Bob's prospect said he is retiring and would introduce Bob to his replacement.

Bob's strategy was to keep the opportunity alive until the replacement is in the role.  Is that what you would do?

If he keeps the opportunity alive, what would that actually involve?  Staying in touch with the guy who is retiring?  The guy who no longer has a need to do this because he's leaving and won't be around to see it through?  And then what?  Start from scratch?  Make a cold call to the new person?  Assume that his replacement will be equally interested?  Assume that his replacement won't have his own established relationships who he could work with?  What an awful strategy!

The proper strategy would be to help his current prospect get the initiative started so that his replacement can see it through.  Helping his prospect get this started will help his prospect make this part of his legacy.  There are only two months before his prospect retires so there is urgency that wasn't there before.  Bob should leverage the urgency to get his prospect to pull the trigger - now - so that everything is in place before he leaves.

But Bob isn't comfortable with this strategy.  Why?

Sales DNA.  Objective Management Group (OMG) has evaluated 2,181,567 salespeople and has lots of data about the four Sales DNA issues below. While Bob's Sales DNA is sabotaging him, let's not forget that Bob is among the weakest salespeople in the world and he represents the bottom 50%.

• Low Money Tolerance - as I mentioned, this is a huge opportunity -  for Bob.  It will easily reach six figures  and for Bob, that's a lot of money.  Even though it will be pocket change for this international conglomerate, Bob believes that it's a huge expense that requires many meetings and discussions to approve.  Bob's apprehension over the money is responsible for why he hasn't closed anything in this account - EVER.  The table below shows the percentage of salespeople, by proficiency, for Low Money Tolerance and Bob is in the weakest 1-25% where 92% of them have this weakness.
  
• Need to be Liked - Bob is a nice guy and people find him very likable.  But Bob needs people to like him and in the case of the top executive from this enterprise company, Bob very much needs to be liked and won't say or do anything that he thinks would get his prospect upset and undermine the opportunity.  The table below shows the percentage of salespeople, by proficiency, for Needing to be Liked and Bob is in the weakest 1-25% where 82% of them have this weakness.
  
• Unable to Stay in the Moment - Because Bob is uncomfortable with the potential deal size and is worried about not being liked if he introduces the topic of price, he is unable to stay in the moment and respond appropriately.  Instead, he is worrying about next steps, what might go wrong, is reacting emotionally and is not in control of his thoughts or actions. The table below shows the percentage of salespeople, by proficiency, for Unable to Stay in the Moment and Bob is in the weakest 1-50% where 89% of them have this weakness.
  
  
  
• Lack of Sales Urgency - Bob's prospect has enough urgency to get this project started but that is not matched by Bob's urgency.  You can read more about that in part 4 above as this is not the first time that Bob's urgency has not been properly aligned with his prospect's.  In the table below, note that the results are reported differently.  The prior tables showed the percentage of salespeople that had the weakness.  This table shows the percentage of salespeople that have the strength.  The top row is the percentage of all salespeople with sales urgency.  The remaining rows are in reverse order, with elite at the top and weak at the bottom. Bob is in the Weak group where 66% (34% strong) have the weakness.
  

Bob isn't very good but let's not forget that Bob is like 50% of salespeople in world who desperately require a tremendous amount of sales training and coaching, something their sales managers are not very adept at providing.

If you would like to see more OMG data, all 21 Sales Core Competencies can be viewed, and filtered by industry here.

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You seek out the best products, best stores, best websites and best experiences.  Doesn't it make sense to wonder about where you can find the best salespeople?

I asked Objective Management Group's (OMG) COO, John Pattison, to dig into some of our data from the evaluations of 1,932,059 salespeople from  companies and provide me with some scores.

I reviewed the data and have a number of very interesting and surprising Salesenomics conclusions to share.

For this exercise, we looked at large (more than 100 salespeople), mid-market (30-100 salespeople) and small/medium (fewer than 30 salespeople) companies.  Then we gathered average scores for each of the 21 Sales Core Competencies as well as Sales Percentile.

It turns out that you'll find more excuse making at larger companies where salespeople scored 43% worse than in small companies.  Why?  Excuse makers aren't nearly as exposed in large companies as they are in small companies, with more layers of management between themselves and those who might call them out for it.  While salespeople from small companies are the weakest overall, they are much less likely to make excuses.  They'll suck without placing blame!

Large companies are also where you'll find salespeople who are more comfortable talking about money and having the kinds of financial conversations that are so necessary for sales success.  Salespeople in large companies scored 21% better in this competency.  Why?  Large companies often sell high-ticket products and services to other large companies and when salespeople aren't comfortable having those financial conversations they fail.  With high-ticket sales, quotas are quite large and when salespeople are missing quota, they are missing by millions, not thousands!  That makes it difficult to stay under the radar.

Large companies have salespeople who are far less likely to use social selling, scoring 39% worse than salespeople at smaller companies!  Salespeople at large companies have an easier time scheduling meetings than those in smaller and lesser-known companies. Think rolling out the red carpet!  But social selling isn't the only thing they don't use.  They are also the worst at using CRM!  The executives who invested millions on their CRM must be absolutely thrilled over that finding.  It tells them that they aren't the only ones frustrated with CRM adaptation and compliance.

The best salespeople overall can be found in mid-market companies where the average sales quotient is ten points higher than in small or large companies.  This makes sense too because those are the companies that take sales training and coaching most seriously.  Many large companies buy sales training but don't really care if it changes anything because they're just checking off a box.  Many small companies don't want to pay for sales training because they're afraid it won't change anything.  But many mid-market companies need it, want it, pay for it, and care tremendously about the outcomes.

The most rejection proof salespeople can also be found in mid-market companies.  It makes sense because that's where you'll find the best hunters!  Mid-market companies also have salespeople who are better at selling value, taking a consultative approach to selling and qualifying.

Salespeople who have the worst scores in Presentation Approach can be found at small companies.  That's where you'll also find salespeople who are less likely to follow the sales process.  I believe this is because there is far less discipline at small companies.

I didn't stop there.  I also looked at sales percentile by industry.

The best?  Commercial Real Estate with an average Sales Percentile of 54%.  The worst? Transportation and shipping with an average Sales Percentile of only 35%.

That's a 55% difference!  It makes sense though.  Many of the commercial realtors that have called on me have attempted to take a consultative approach even though there were still some that began conversations by asking for my lease expiration date.  That transactional approach can be seen with shippers too.  All of the shippers that have called on us seem to be unaware that there are any buying criteria other than price!

So what does all of this mean?  

It means that no matter where we look, how we look at it, how we slice it and dice it, and how many findings we dissect, most salespeople are still guilty of sucking and most companies are still guilty of allowing them to remain sucky.

Leave your comments on the LinkedIn discussion thread here.

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Last week Tom Hopkins shared a post on LinkedIn that resembled what I have said so many times.  He said, "The art of selling involves two jobs: Job One is to reduce sales resistance and the other is to increase sales acceptance."

Many readers left comments about the importance of relationships as a means to preventing resistance from going up.

I left a comment that said, "Thanks Tom.  Most salespeople fail to lower resistance because they lack the self-awareness to understand what it is that they might say or do, or how they might act that would raise resistance in the first place.  When salespeople can anticipate and manage resistance, they won't have to work so hard to reduce it so frequently.  All of the comments about the importance of developing relationships to lower resistance and increase acceptance are misguided.  Just look inside your own family dynamics to recognize that relationships don't eliminate or lower resistance.  It might be quite the opposite."

One reader asked me a great question, "How do you anticipate resistance?" 

I thought that was such a great question that we should discuss the topic more fully in this article. Are you familiar with the Carly Simon song from the 70's?  It was even more popular as the theme song for the Heinz Ketchup ads.  Ready?

A great starting point for this discussion is my short 2:34 video on managing resistance.  

So back to the question as to how you anticipate resistance.

Most salespeople are so bad at anticipating resistance that they are frequently doing one of two things:

1. Missing the signs - their prospects are resistant and they are completely blind to it;
2. Trying to overcome whatever resistance they do observe by becoming defensive and making the situation worse.

Our two-year old GoldenDoodle anticipates resistance better than that! 

The Carly Simon song was, "Anticipation."

Our dog knows that when the rest of the family is out, and my phone plays the familiar sound from the Blink camera, they have returned home and he excitedly runs to the door.  He knows that after he comes back in the house from doing his business he'll get a bone and he sits and waits for it.  He knows that when all of us put our jackets on we'll be leaving the house and he runs into the bathroom where he'll spend the time sleeping.  He knows that when we turn off the news we'll be heading upstairs to bed and he leads the way.  He is a master of anticipation.

Unfortunately, most salespeople are a bit slower on the uptake as they frequently fail to recognize the patterns. 

One of the reasons for that is their poor listening skills. Only 25% of all salespeople emphasize listening over talking and it's no surprise that almost the identical percentage of salespeople listen effectively.  Those who aren't really listening won't hear the building resistance in a prospect's voice.  Salespeople don't listen because they are strategizing in their mind, thinking ahead, considering what's been said, scripting their next move, determining what their next question should be and generally not paying attention. It's not a big jump to go from lack of listening to lack of observing.  If they aren't paying attention via their listening, then they aren't paying attention via observation either. If they aren't observing, they won't see the changes in body language that could signal the building of resistance. When salespeople are busy thinking instead of paying attention, they are not controlling their emotions and staying in the moment as they should.  Only 37% of all salespeople are able to control their emotions.

Let's revisit the self-awareness issue.  Most salespeople aren't consciously aware of how prospects react when salespeople answer a question a certain way, ask a certain question, become defensive, begin blabbing their talking points, dodge questions, move the needle on the bullshit meter, or appear untrustworthy, all cases where their prospects could regularly become resistant.

You've undoubtedly heard the question, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" Wikipedia states that this is a "philosophical thought experiment that raises questions regarding observation and perception."  The same question is valid when applied to salespeople.  If a prospect becomes resistant and the salesperson doesn't see or hear it, was the prospect truly resistant?

Sales closing rates vary wildly by industry but generally range from as low as 10% to near 50%.  In its evaluations of 1,865,460 salespeople, salespeople scored an average of only 24% in the Closer Competency and only 6% of all salespeople have the Closer Competency as a strength. (See stats on all 21 Sales Core Competencies) 

Let's play a game of what if.

If 75% of salespeople are not really paying attention, it's reasonable to deduct that resistance goes up in at least half of their sales calls (37.5% of all calls assuming all salespeople make the same number of calls) without the salespeople knowing it.  Failed closings average 70%, and if resistance occurs 37.5% of the time, then in 26% of the cases, resistance is responsible for salespeople losing the sale.

Managing resistance is huge and Tom Hopkins was and is correct when he said that lowering resistance is job number 1.

There is no sales tactic that is easier to learn than how to lower resistance. It's a shame that for most salespeople, it is the sales equivalent of an archeology degree.  They aren't likely to use it.

Back in the 1960's it made sense for gasoline prices to be discounted down to the nearest 9/10 of a cent because gas prices ranged between 17.9 to 18.9 cents.  But when gas prices are around $3.00 per gallon, how does 9/10 cent continue to make sense?  Some habits die really hard.

I don't know about you but some things just don't make sense to me.  I loved the Leavitt/Dubner series of books on Freakonomics and thought I could share some interesting sales and sales management data that make little sense.

Nearly 50% of salespeople are willing to work on straight commission but only 7% of companies offer such a compensation plan.

Two of the sales metrics tracked most often are margin at 65% and profitability at 51%.  Surprisingly, only 6% of companies track the cost of a sales call.  Why do companies who care about margin and profitability not care about the cost of a sales call?

Only 34% of companies track win rates, 32% track account retention, and 9% track the percentage of meetings that close; yet 57% track the percentage of salespeople under/over goal and 47% track their top opportunities.  Why would they track their top opportunities but not care about meetings that close or win rates?

49% of companies track the number of opportunities in their pipeline yet only 27% track the quality of those opportunities.  That leads to the low win rates that companies are not really tracking and the inaccurate forecasts that drive CEO's crazy!  

Salespeople reporting to a manager with strong Coaching skills have 26% more closable opportunities in their sales pipelines while salespeople reporting to a manager with strong Accountability skills have 18% more closable opportunities in their pipelines.  On the other side of the fence, salespeople with sales managers who have weak coaching and/or accountability skills saw 77% of their late stage opportunities moved back to one of the earliest stages of the pipeline!

Sales managers with strong coaching skills are 230% more likely to have elite salespeople working for them!  If that doesn't make a case for developing coaching skills, I don't know what does.

Although they should be spending half their time on coaching, Sales Managers spend around half their time split between coaching, accountability and motivation.  How do they spend the other half of their time?  Does it really matter?  Whether it's spent on personal sales, closing reps' deals, putting out fires, or administrative crap, all of it distracts from coaching.

Salespeople with no sales experience – born to sell – have a sales percentile score of 32 with an average Sales DNA score of 61 and an average Will to Sell score of 60.  They fall into the very weak category.  Compare that to salespeople with 5-10 years of experience – trained to sell – who have a sales percentile score of 58 (182% higher) with an average Sales DNA score of 67 (110% higher) and an average Will to Sell score of 66 (110% higher).  Trained to sell beats born to sell.

All of the salesenomics statistics referenced above are from Objective Management Group's (OMG) data warehouse.  OMG has evaluated or assessed 1,863,494 salespeople from companies in countries.

Would you like to see how salespeople score in each of the 21 sales core competencies?  Click here.

Would you like to check out the most accurate and predictive sales candidate assessment? Click here.

Would you like to discover some more salesenomics?  Check out these articles: