My wife and I were on a Mother's Day walk when we saw something I had never seen before.  I should have snapped a picture but I didn't, and could not find a single picture on the internet that captured what we saw.  So I went to Neural.Love and used AI to create the image above. The waterfall and lagoon the site added to the image was nice a bonus!

Looking at the mountain in front of us, the lower third was bright and vibrant green, with full-sized leaves on the trees.  The middle third was a duller, lighter green with new, young, and still growing leaves on its trees.  The top third of the mountain was brown, high enough in elevation that the leaves had not yet popped.  To make the mid-May look even more mystical, there was a slight haze covering the browner, top third.

The sight was very nice to look at but regular readers know that it could only be an analogy for something sales related.

Three things came to me at once.  The Hot and Cold Game came first because the colors on the mountain had to do with temperatures and in this case, hot, warm, and cold.  For some reason, Sales Process came next and I combined the three thoughts.

There is a correlation between sales process and sales success.  I once estimated that when a sales team did not have a company-wide sales process that their sales team followed, and such a process was created, optimized and executed, a 25% increase in sales followed.  Today I dug through Objective Management Group (OMG) data and will share my insights below but first, let's review the attributes measured within OMG's Sales Process competency.

Here is what I found:

Only 35% of all salespeople have the core competency Sales Process as a strength (greater than 66). 

Filtering by Sales Percentile, 82% of the top salespeople and 5% of the worst salespeople have Sales Process as a strength. The best salespeople are 1640% stronger at Sales Process than the worst salespeople. 

An alternate way to look at the Sales Process core competency is through average scores.  The worst salespeople (bottom 10%) score only 21% on Sales Process while the best salespeople (top 5%) score 77%.  The average score for all salespeople is 49%, eerily similar to the percentage of salespeople that hit quota in 2022.  The best salespeople score 367% better!

I also analyzed performance data and after filtering on salespeople who were not performing (below 80% of quota), only 4% were strong in the Sales Process competency.  The opposite of that analysis revealed that of those who were performing, 85% were strong in the Sales Process competency.  Salespeople who are strong in Sales Process are 2125% more likely to be performers.  That is very strong correlation!

Companies and their salespeople who are closely aligned and following the sales process are hot and green.

Companies and their salespeople who are not as closely aligned but still following the sales process to some degree are warm and light green.

Companies and their salespeople who are not closely aligned with or following the sales process are cold and brown.

Another way of putting this is that if you don't currently have a consistently effective, staged, milestone-centric, customer-focused sales process in place, you are probably being frozen out from winning some opportunities.  If you do have a sales process like that in place, your salespeople are probably on fire, winning the lion's share of opportunities.

Light a fire under sales process!

The Sales Process competency is just one of 21 Sales Core Competencies measured by OMG.  See all 21 here.

As we do each Friday in March and April, my wife and I drove to upstate New York to watch our son's college baseball games.  But this article isn't only about normal, it's also about the abnormal in both baseball and sales.

For miles along I-90 in Western Massachusetts, both on Friday and returning Monday morning, there was only 1 very weak bar of signal on Verizon's wireless network.  Not acceptable and not normal.

The temperature for spring baseball games is usually in the 40's and on nice weekends, the 50's.  It touched 90 degrees for the two games on Saturday and was in the 70's for the two Sunday games.  Very acceptable but not normal.

The leaves were on the trees!  Acceptable but not normal.

Our son had 4 hits on Saturday.  Acceptable but not normal.

I looked at the stats for the nine starters in the Friday night Boston Red Sox game and six of them had batting averages that were not only well below the league average of .243, they were all below .200. Very unacceptable and not normal.

If we look at the capabilities of a typical sales team, failing to meet the CEO's revenue requirements, it would be quite normal for us to see two thirds of the sales team falling significantly below the industry or global averages.   Unlike the statistics used by baseball management and operations and devoured by fans, sales stats comparing sales contributors and sales teams aren't available, preventing Senior Sales Leaders and the C Suite from seeing how their sales team compares with other sales teams in their industry.  At least that's how the thinking goes.  But it's untrue.  Those comparisons are available and have been available.  Objective Management Group (OMG) has those statistics on more than 2.3 million salespeople and thousands of sales teams in 200 industries.  OMG makes that data available and I'll show you where you can see the stats for your industry, and even see how your sales team compares to both the industry norms, as well as the abnormals like the top 10% and bottom 10%.

Most executives review their sales team and determine who the A's, B's and C's are based on revenue.

"Revenue is not, has never been, and never will be an indicator of sales effectiveness. "

Revenue is revenue and Executives have revenue sensitivity. Watch this 3-minute video to better understand what I mean.

 

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3:13

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Stop using revenue to rank your salespeople or to conclude that your salespeople with the most revenue are good salespeople.  It's fiction.  It's BS.  It's misinformation.  It will lead you to make bad decisions.  Revenue represents what customers spend with you.  Sales effectiveness is the measure of a salesperson's ability to grow revenue by bringing in new business.

OMG measures 21 Sales Core Competencies.  You can see the stats for all 21 competencies for all salespeople here, select your industry to see the industry-specific stats, and begin the process to see those same stats for your sales team.  This is FREE!  After seeing your aggregate scores compared to your industry and the rest of the world, you can optionally receive a variety of detailed reports and files for a fee.

Enjoy!

Image copyright Copyright 123RF

Today's article is different from most of my other articles because there is no opening analogy, very little data, and a complete lack of humor. It's such a serious article I was ready to delete it before I clicked the publish button. If you don't like the subject, the content or the writing, it's OK.  This needed to be written.

I was watching a local newscast where the anchor did a story about salaries.  It began with a student in his broadcast journalism class asking how much he earned.  He was averse to sharing his salary with the public, but he conducted some research and learned that GenZ'ers share and compare salaries and tend to know how much everyone else is paid.  See this article from George Anders, a LinkedIn Senior Editor, where he shared statistics showing that 81% of Gen Z welcome full candor.  Compare that to just 28% of Boomers.

There are three phases to the salary unveiling process:

1. Asking how much others are paid. 
2. Corporate transparency by sharing how much everyone is paid.
3. The E in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) becomes the norm.  Proponents of Equity expect equal outcomes for all - like participation trophies in youth sports long ago replacing the performance awards that are part of professional sports.  This article does a good job of defining pay equity.  While traditional views of Pay Equity typically considered gender and race, that is not what I am addressing in this article. I am talking about what happens when corporate executives listen to voices - any voices - demanding equal pay. They may be whining because they aren't willing to work as hard, because they don't have equal skills, or because they aren't willing to put in the time.  But they want to be paid the same.

I've had this argument with CEOs before and it goes like this:  "What do you mean Bob is not money motivated?  He came to me last week and demanded more money!"  To which I responded, "He wanted you to GIVE him more money.  Money motivated salespeople ask, 'What do I need to do differently to earn more money?'"  Bob wanted welfare.  Money motivated salespeople will do the work if they know what the work entails.

How does a growing movement towards Equity apply to sales compensation?

There are four popular sales compensation plans in use by most companies today:

1. Weighted towards commission: A lower base salary, based on experience and/or territory, augmented by a generous percentage of either gross revenue or gross margin.  While all salespeople would be paid the same percentage, their salaries might be different and total earnings would be quite different based on overall sales performance.  
2. Weighted towards salary: A higher base salary, based on experience, territory, and/or size of accounts, augmented by either a small percentage of gross revenue or gross margin, or a pre-determined bonus for meeting and/or exceeding quota.
3. All salary.  The salary in the plan with the lowest financial risk might vary based on experience, territory or account sizes.
4. All commission.  There is no base salary in the plan with the highest financial risk, but the opportunity to earn more than other salespeople is considerable based on a "sky's the limit" compensation plan. 

In an effort to appeal to salespeople with varying preferences, some companies offer all four of these plans but most companies offer only one.

According to data from the assessment of more than 2.3 million salespeople by Objective Management Group (OMG), 5% of salespeople are very satisfied with their income and nearly 40% are very unsatisfied with their income. My anecdotal experience with this is my belief that the 5% group is satisfied with a salary that is larger than they expected and the top earners, being extrinsically motivated, always want to earn more!  All told, 27% of salespeople are extrinsically motivated, which could account for as much as half of the 40% who are unsatisfied with their current earnings. The largest percentage of extrinsically motivated salespeople are found in the top 5% of all salespeople.

When it comes to sales compensation, there is already some vague transparency in place as salespeople are keenly aware that the highest performers earn more than the lowest performers.  At some point, companies will be pressured to bring pay equity to sales teams too.  It will happen with publicly traded companies first, while private companies may resist for as long as they can.  The CEOs of privately held companies are more likely to understand the dynamics of rewarding sales performance as many of them served in sales at some point in their career. The CEOs at publicly traded companies, often coming from a financial, operational or a technical background, may be more susceptible to pressure from under-performing salespeople as well as HR and/or legal teams.

When pay equity comes to sales teams, top performers will be the group that is most affected.  While it is too early to know whether their incomes will be reduced, they will be compensated equally with the worst performers on the team. If you are a top performer, and you are no longer earning significantly more than the worst performers in the company, what would you do?  Here are some possibilities:

• Nothing changes.  As long as my total compensation isn't reduced, I don't care.
• Everything changes.  If I am not compensated fairly for my all-star performance, I'm not going to try as hard or work as hard.  Why bother?
• I'm leaving. If my performance isn't financially rewarded, I'll move to a company where my performance will be appreciated.
• I'm retiring.  F**k it.
• I'm starting my own company. I've thought about this for a long time and this creates the perfect conditions.

There is some anecdotal evidence for how pay equity might play out. 

I've trained sales teams who were paid only a salary but let's look at two different companies, each with different plans.  In one company, their performance in the base year determined their salary for the next year.  That's a plan where salaried salespeople are paid on performance.  Those salespeople responded to training, improved, sold more and were compensated for it.  In another company, performance did not influence future compensation and everyone received the identical 4% raise each year.  Those salespeople did not respond to training, did not increase their sales, and unlike most salespeople I have trained, saw their sales roles as jobs instead of potentially lucrative careers, and lacked the incentive to transition from transactional order takers to consultative sellers.  They said, "Why should I?  What's in it for me?"

I don't pretend to know the degree to which Pay Equity will come to sales teams or when it will begin to occur. I don't know the percentage of companies that will embrace Pay Equity.  I do know that this is a frightening concept. Sales is the economic engine for companies and effective salespeople determine to what degree that engine performs.  From cut-throat competition, to self-limiting beliefs, to dishonest prospects, to economic restrictions, to the inability to reach decision makers, selling is more difficult today than ever before. If it wasn't, then everyone would seek out a career in sales. 

If a transition to pay equity on sales teams becomes reality, it won't affect anyone except top-performing salespeople and the top and bottom lines of the companies they work for.

What do you think?  Share your comments below or in the LinkedIn discussion.

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Last week we watched Spirited, the new Apple TV Plus take on the old Charles Dickens novel, A Christmas Carol.  In this lighthearted film, Will Ferrell is the Ghost of Christmas Present and Ryan Reynolds is the 2022 version of Scrooge.  This Scrooge is a funny, selfish, materialistic, song and dance man, who is irredeemable. Can Will Farrell's character redeem Ryan Reynolds' character?

As usual, the movie got me thinking about salespeople and Understanding the Sales Force.

Ryan Reynold's character, Clint Briggs, is a fabulous showman, salesperson, and marketing consultant rolled into one.  The problem is that he never considers anyone or anything other than himself and his personal success..

There is a correlation between Clint Briggs and salespeople, many of whom are also irredeemable, but for different reasons. 

Most salespeople - 87% - still sell like it's 1975 and fall into one of three buckets:

1. They sell transactionally. In other words, they talk about their company, their products and services, themselves, their features and benefits, and try to leverage that for a sale.
2. They rely on demos to generate interest and then try to close.
3. They rely on having the lowest price and take orders.

Only 13% of all salespeople take a consultative approach to selling and almost none of them can be found in the bottom 50% - the group that fails to meet quota each year.  A coincidence? On the other end of the spectrum, the top 10% of all salespeople are 4300% more likely to have the Consultative Seller competency as a strength!

Are the 87% redeemable?  Can they make the transition from transactional sellers, demo-focused presenters, and price focused order takers to professional, consultative sellers?  Only an OMG (Objective Management Group) sales team evaluation (SEIA) can answer that question.  Download free samples of the sales team evaluation here.

Spirited does have three things in common with prior versions of A Christmas Story and those are the ghosts of Christmas' past, present and future.  That got me thinking about the articles I wrote in 2022, the articles you'll see in December, and what you can look forward to in 2023.

Our ghost of articles past reminds us that we began 2022 talking about whether buying has changed and if salespeople have adapted.  We followed that up with our 6th installment in the popular Bob Chronicles about salespeople who make things your problem.  Then came an article about the 10 Unwritten Rules of Prospects and how to break them.  

February began with an article on how hiring salespeople the right way yields 62% less turnover and 80% higher quotas.  We followed that up with the similarities between cyber thieves, hackers and most salespeople.  No kidding!  Then came this favorite, the 7th installment of the Bob Chronicles about salespeople who can't close closable business.  I love the Bob articles!  Then I provided 10 steps to crush your sales forecasts.  Finally, our last article in February was my review of a prospecting email with some elements that could actually work for salespeople.

March started with an article explaining how salespeople with a high tolerance for money are 4,000 percent better than those with a low tolerance for money.  That's a huge differentiator!  Next was the comparison between great baseball coaches and great sales coaches.  Then I began a new series of my most popular videos and rants.  It started with the top 10 but there are now nearly 2 dozen popular videos and rants to watch! 

April started with another baseball analogy - this one about how the philosophy of great pitching coaches can improve your sales team.  Then I explained how to identify the accurate reason for a salesperson who is not performing.  

May's first article had my 5 simple steps to grow sales by 33%.  Really!  May ended with an article about how to prepare your sales team to thrive in a recession.

In June, I explained how salespeople like to go fast but good salespeople actually go slow and followed that up with an article on the benefits of competency-based assessments.   

In July, I wrote about why you can't afford to lose customers or salespeople right now.  Then I wrote about big company strategies that small and medium businesses can emulate.  The last article of July explained the differences in requirements for success in different selling roles. 

August began with one of my trademark takedowns of a junk-science article with 20 attributes of successful salespeople. Not. That was followed with an article about how to stop account churn.  Then I explained how my car's qualifying ability is a great example of how salespeople should qualify. Then came the article that explained how salespeople would be impacted by the 15% minimum corporate tax and how difficult it would be for the IRS to hire 80,000 agents.  Sorry if reporting on an actual news story offended some of you.  The post that should have gotten people upset but didn't was when I compared the sorry and pathetic Boston Red Sox to most sales teams.  Not a single complaint about that one!  My final article in August was another baseball analogy where I compared closing a tough sale to hitting a home run.

In September I found and shared an article with a doctor's testimonial about the importance of his salespeople.  Awesome!  Then I wrote about 10 attributes that do not differentiate top from bottom salespeople.  Next up was my tortured message to the masses wondering why more companies don't use OMG.  Then came another takedown of a Harvard Business Review article that appeared online.  The last article in September talked about how you can double your revenue in a recession.  

October began with my personal life comparison of Jeeps and Infinities and how that analogy holds up when interpreting an OMG sales candidate assessment for hiring salespeople.  My 8th installment of the Bob Chronicles looked at the difference between selling skills and effectiveness.  Then I compared alleged criminals who are released under cashless bail to underperforming salespeople who are released back into the field.   My final October article explored the correlation between motivation and sales compensation.

In November I wondered if salespeople will sell more effectively when sales managers sell and coach and if new sales managers can be difference makers.  Then I wrote a take-down of a Wall Street Journal article about selling to millennials.  My most recent article compared my failing wiper blades to why executives fail to take action when they have underperforming sales teams.

Which of these articles will make the list of the top 10 articles of the year?  Stay tuned for the December reveal as well as my annual Nutcracker post.  In 2023 I'll be focusing even more on how you can use OMG's data to improve sales performance.

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.

If you aren't aware of the crime taking place in most of America's big cities, you have either been living in a cave or experiencing willful ignorance. Most of the alleged criminals are repeat offenders and those who are arrested are usually back on the street committing additional crimes later that day due to cashless bail and the presumption of innocence.  

If you think about it, and you don't have to think very long or hard, cashless bail mirrors how companies deal with under-performing salespeople who are also repeat offenders.  Let me explain.

A typical US sales team consists of 15 people, including a Sales VP, 2 Regional Sales Managers, and 12 salespeople.  Of course, there are exponentially larger and smaller sales teams, but this is the version that we most frequently encounter.  This team will have no more than 3 performing salespeople, another 3 who sometimes hit their numbers, and 6 who chronically under-perform.

Let's assume that the salespeople who are ranked 10-12 are not just under-performers, but pathetically ineffective salespeople.  At the end of the year, they receive their annual review - the equivalent of an arrest and release - and are back on the street to underperform for another year, making the company both both the victim and the enabler.  This is insanity!

While some could argue that this is happening because it is so difficult to find sales candidates and harder still to find good ones.  The argument doesn't hold up because while the current labor market is consistent with the lack of quality sales candidates, the practice of rewarding sucky salespeople with continued employment has been around as long as I have!

Three contributing factors to this practice are relationships, ego and hope.

Most sales leaders aren't comfortable terminating salespeople with whom they have developed a strong relationship.  Their ego doesn't allow them to terminate ineffective salespeople because it would be an admission of a hiring mistake and ineffective coaching.  And they hope that this will be a breakout year for these salespeople.

OMG's (Objective Management Group) Sales Team Evaluation provides leaders with science-backed data to know which under-performers can be trained and coached up, how much better they can become, what kind of help they will need to achieve those improvements, and how long it will take.  Isn't that better than hope?

While it helps to train and coach up those who can improve and identify those who can't, the other way to address this issue is to fix the sales hiring problem.  It's time to stop using gut instinct, personality assessments that weren't designed for sales, faulty sales recruiting processes, and resumes as a basis for hiring salespeople.  These practices are at best hit or miss with an emphasis on miss, and examples of ego getting in the way of methodically making good sales hiring decisions.  OMG's legendary sales candidate assessments are customizable, accurate and most importantly, predictive of sales success in the specific sales role for which the company is hiring.

Several White Papers on these topics are available as a free download here.

You can request samples here.

You can see the 21 Sales Core Competencies OMG measures here.  Each core competency has an average of 10 attributes for a total of around 200 scores/findings per salesperson.

You can request more information here.

After an OMG evaluation of his sales team, one of the regional sales managers pushed back and said the OMG evaluations were wrong. The scores were not very good for his top salesperson despite the fact that he sold the company's biggest deal last year and just made president's club.  I asked some questions and learned that this salesperson's big deal was his only decent sale in 6 years and his sales manager actually closed the heavily discounted deal.  I asked the sales manager which was more indicative of who his salesperson really was - the 6 years of under-performance or the one deal that his salesperson received the credit for?  After a minute of hemming and hawing, he admitted it was the 6 years.  Then I asked which was a more accurate evaluation of that salesperson - the OMG evaluation or his own evaluation.  After another round of hems and haws and he admitted it was the OMG evaluation. 

The best investment you can make to improve sales performance is to use OMG's suite of sales team evaluations and candidate assessments.  They are the Gold Standard.

Image copyright 123RF

What would you do if, in the middle of summer, a big box store said you would really need a snowblower in preparation for the summer snowstorms we were about to get?  Crazy, right?

What if Staples sent out a promo to buy all the printer paper you can in preparation for a printing explosion as we move away from digital?  Wouldn't that be nuts?

What if a professional sports team reached out to your really good 12-year-old and offered them a professional contract?  Is that even possible?

So when a promotion for an upcoming webinar appeared in my Twitter feed last week I was equally astounded by the lack of anticipatory awareness of the sales training firm and online publication promoting it.  It said:

My first reaction was that this must have been something from 2016 - right before the boom that lasted until the pandemic slammed the economy to the ground.  Or, from the 4th quarter of 2020, when we expected the economy to come roaring back.  But it simply can't be something that is remotely relevant to what we are about to experience.  Here's what we know, and how that will impact companies and their sales teams in 2022.  

I'm not an economist, but I can read, seek out trustworthy sources, and have 46 years of business experience. On top of that I am street smart, have good common sense and  can do the math.  

Inflation.  According to Trading Economics, the current inflation rate is running at over 5% compared to 1.2% just a year ago.  That is bound to lead to higher interest rates and a drop in consumer confidence, followed by layoffs, spending freezes and more price increases.

Federal Debt.  According to Statista, the federal debt is over 28 trillion dollars, more than four times what it was 20 years ago.  On top of that, Congress is debating on two bills, which together, would add another 5 trillion dollars to the debt. Regardless of what anyone in the US government says, it can only lead to higher taxes. One of the bills being debated right now has provisions for significant tax hikes.  According to the NY Times, the corporate tax rate could increase by more than 30% and the rate for the wealthiest Americans could double! According to Tax Policy Center, senior fellow, Howard Gleckman, "95% of all federal taxes are paid by households in the top two quintiles — those making about $98,000 or more." 

No matter how you cut it, higher taxes lead to layoffs and spending freezes. The wealthy will have less disposable income to inject into the economy and the businesses they run must layoff staff to compensate for profits being redirected to pay additional corporate income taxes.

Don't get me wrong. If multi-billion dollar companies aren't paying any taxes they should pay their share but this won't affect them.  According to the US Treasury, 30 million SMEs account for nearly two-thirds of net new private sector jobs. This will affect them and their employees.

Immigration.  You don't have to live in a cave to see what's happening on the southern border and with the Afghanistan immigrants.  Millions of people streaming into the US means millions more low wage workers.  According to George Borjas, professor of Economics at Harvard University, "Immigration redistributes wealth from those who compete with immigrants to those who use immigrants—from the employee to the employer." 

As wages go down, disposable income vanishes and that negatively impacts the economy.

Stock Market.  Wall Street has the jitters right now because they don't like what they are seeing.  According to Morgan Stanley's Chief Investment Officer, Mike Wilson, stocks could be in for a 20% correction. 

That's a devaluation of 20%! 

According to BTIG's Juilian Emanuel, the markets are mimicking 1999 and for those of us who were around back then, it's not good news.  As a matter of fact, that's the kind of news that causes companies to stop spending money in a hurry.

If you've been reading anything in the news, you know there's a lot more going on but these four issues directly impact our economy.  And you don't have to live in the US to be affected by the US Economy because according to the NY Times, as the USA goes, so goes the global economy.  

These four issues don't suggest a coming boom, they warn of a serious recession, with high inflation, high interest rates, and high taxes, coming soon to a city near you.  In other words, an economic disaster.  Not as bad as the complete shutdown we saw in 2020, but probably as bad as the economic crisis we faced in 2009.

So how will that impact companies and their sales teams?

When large companies enact spending freezes, it has a trickle down effect.  For B2B, think cancellations, PO's that aren't issued, layoffs, fear and most especially, real challenges to getting products and services sold unless companies can't do without them.  And even then, there will be more competition and a race to the bottom as companies demand lower prices. Salespeople are ill-equipped and will be scared, while the companies they work for will be too risk-averse to rely on order takers to suddenly sell value in hopes of maintaining margins. 

"Selling value will be the key to survival but
selling value does not occur in a vacuum". 

It requires strong consultative selling skills (listening and questioning) in the context of a sales process that supports a consultative approach.

Selling value assumes that your salespeople actually got themselves a meeting!  While getting meetings aren't that difficult with good lead generation efforts, meeting with a decision maker is.  46% of all salespeople believe they are reaching decision makers while Objective Management Group's (OMG) data shows that only 13% are actually doing that.  And if the economy tanks the way I expect it to, watch what will happen to those lead generation efforts!

From 2017 to the pandemic, most salespeople were successful in spite of themselves because there was more business than capacity to deliver.  Yet 50% of reps still failed to meet quota.  What will happen to the bottom half of your sales team when there will no longer be orders to take and each opportunity will need to be found and properly sold?  It doesn't sound very exciting.

Now is the time to take control of what lurks ahead.

The. Single. Most. Important. Thing. You. Can. Do. Right. Now. is to have your sales team professionally evaluated.  You must:

• Learn who is part of your future and who was part of your past
• Whether sales management is up to the task of coaching up your salespeople
• Who has the ability to become effective taking a consultative rather than transactional approach to sales?
• Who has the ability to sell value instead of price?
• Is your sales process ready to support a consultative, value based approach?
• How effective are your salespeople at reaching actual decision makers?
• How effective is your team at gettin prospects past nice-to-have and getting them to must-have?
• How much better can your salespeople become?
• How long will it take?
• What is required?

Those are the first ten things that came to mind but there are hundreds of other questions that could be and should be answered as part of a sales force evaluation.  What do you need to know about your sales team to navigate what I expect will be a very difficult 2022?

Learn more about a sales team evaluation here.

Explore OMG's data from more than 2 million salespeople in the 21 Sales Core Competencies we measure.

Request a sample from a sales team evaluation. Check off the following boxes on your sample request:

When it rains it pours, especially when it's coming down in buckets!

Buckets are important, especially when you're attempting to coach up a salesperson or even improve your own sales performance.  If you don't have the OMG evaluation at your fingertips and can't lookup the scores in 21 Sales Core Competencies, or see which attributes need to be improved, you'll need to think in terms of buckets.

When salespeople are struggling, there are five primary buckets to consider:

1. Pipeline - Their pipeline sucks
2. Urgency - they haven't been successful uncovering compelling reasons to buy so that urgency can be created
3. Qualifying - they haven't been able to get their good prospects fully qualified
4. Closing - they aren't converting their qualified opportunities
5. Attitude - they lack a positive outlook.

All other issues you might identify should appear in one of those five buckets.

Now let's place the three traditional groups of salespeople into buckets:

1. A players:  They are the best salespeople in your company and exceed quota and/or expectations, but outside of your company and industry they might not be A or even B players.  Everything is relative.
2. B players: They're not as good as your A players but they do meet quota and/or expectations.
3. C players: They are chronic under achievers who fail to meet quota.

Next, let's integrate the buckets of salespeople with the buckets of challenges.

Let's pretend we're dealing with a C player who has an inadequate pipeline.  We have five more buckets to explore:

1. Effort - they aren't making enough calls or attempts
2. Engagement - they aren't getting their contacts engaged in the conversation
3. Messaging - they aren't using proven, time-tested, positioning statements to get contacts engaged
4. Delivery - they don't sound very good delivering the message
5. Conversions - they aren't converting their calls to meetings

In this scenario, you may not be able to identify a single bucket to blame but you have to start somewhere.  If effort is an issue and you don't fix the effort, the other four buckets don't matter. If effort is lacking due to discouragement from past ineffectiveness, you may need to work on the other four buckets before you can return to effort.

It can be overwhelming to identify exactly what you need to work on to improve sales performance.  If you can learn to think in terms of buckets, you'll have a better chance of working on the right end of the problem.

I just love it when our lawn looks gorgeous - thick, lush, and green, green, green.  Getting it looking that good requires fertilizing, aerating, thatching, over seeding, and frequent mowing, all things better suited to the landscaping company than me. Of course, some sun and water help too. And even with an irrigation system, by the middle of the summer, areas of our lawn begin to look like crap. Not to worry though. By mid fall, the lawn looks its absolute best.  Yup, my lawn never looks better than it does on November 1. Right before it snows and turns brown for the winter!  You have to admit, that's a lot of work and expense for a lawn that looks perfect for all of 6 weeks - 3 weeks in the spring and 3 weeks in the fall!

                                                         Great looking spring lawn. 

                                           Crappy looking summer lawn

Because my lawn looks its worst on August 1 and its best on November 1, it has a lot in common with most sales organizations.  A sales team looks its best on January 1, when every opportunity in the pipeline is a possibility and forecasts predict a banner year.  It looks its worst just a week earlier, when on December 23, sales leaders defend the team's sub-par performance to the CEO and explain why 57% of their salespeople failed to hit quota - again!  It's easy to explain why the lawn fails, as dry, hot summers will do that.  But why do sales teams continue to fail, year after year, regardless of industry, and in every economy?  Why don't the numbers improve?  Why don't more salespeople jump from C's to B's?  From B's to A's?  From D's to C's?  The answers - and there are plenty - are evasive.  But let's try!

We can certainly pin some of the blame on sales managers.  My last two articles explain many of the problems contributing to ineffective sales management.  Read about crappy sales managers and then read the follow-up article about crappy coaching.

We can certainly pin some of the blame on salespeople.  Why don't they try to improve?  Why don't they invest in sales self-development?  Why don't they read more books and articles, watch more videos, listen to more audio and push themselves out from their comfort zone?   Why don't they practice?

After 35 years in this business, I still don't understand why sales, as a profession, includes so many ineffective salespeople.  Based on data from Objective Management Group (OMG), who has evaluated and assessed 2,040,355 salespeople, 50% of all salespeople suck.  Take a look at the image below where I have isolated the bottom 50% of all salespeople.  This screen shot represents the percentage of those weak salespeople who have the ten tactical selling competencies as strengths:

After seeing these percentages is it any wonder why half of your salespeople fail to hit quota?  Don't think it could get any worse?  Take a look at what happens when we look at the bottom 10% where it's clear that the only thing some of them are capable of is making friends and presentations:

These ten selling competencies are ten of the twenty-one sales competencies that OMG measures.  You can see them all, filter by industry and sales percentile, and even see how your salespeople compare.  Data on OMG's 21 Sales Core Competencies.

We can pin some of the blame on history. To a certain degree, C Suite executives are conditioned to accept these year-end results and when they are disappointed yet again, they don't raise hell, don't fire the sales leaders, and don't storm out the door.  They simply aren't surprised any more.  Failure is baked in.

You know what it takes to make a lawn look great and from experience I know what it takes for a sales team to become great.  Companies that evaluate their sales teams, provide effective sales training, embrace sales process, train their sales managers to coach, get sales selection right and improve their sales cultures, yield huge gains in sales and profits. Yes, margins increase too. That's what happens when salespeople learn to sell value instead of price.

With that in mind, we can certainly assign a lot of blame on company owners, CEO's and senior sales leaders who don't take those steps and/or don't take those steps seriously. 

The conversation on the LinkedIn post for this article has some fantastic additional reasons why and took my lawn analogy even further.  The best one so far is from Rocky LaGrone who said, "...Don't forget about pesticides for those pesky insects, pre-emergent for unwanted weeds, over watering, and fungus. Those are the same in sales as mediocre sales leaders and salespeople. It's the equivalent to making excuses and accepting them. Add lack of understanding of how to bring value and premature presentation and you have a baron landscape in sales. With zero effective coaching you might as well not mow! The layman landscaper cant see the early warning signs of root damage or infestations of grubs no more than the layman sales executive can't see their rotting sales foundation without measuring the right metrics at the right frequency. Most people react to their grass and don't pay attention to the roots. Healthy roots produce healthy plants and the same is true for sales. The fundamentals never change. It's the application of the fundamentals that make the difference. A professional landscaper will start with a soil sample and analysis. Why wouldn't a sales executive start with an analysis of their salesforce?"

There are a lot more great comments like this one at the LinkedIn post.

There's no excuse for not weaponizing your sales teams and equipping them with every appropriate sales strategy and tool to leverage their ability to close opportunities they have routinely allowed your competitors to retain, steal or close.

As Michael Jackson famously sung in his timeless 1980's hit, Man in the Mirror,  Make a change.  Start with the [person] in the mirror.

The lettering above the dials of our LG washing machine (pictured above when new) have worn off.  I went online believing I could get a replacement decal and while LG does not provide replacements,  they will replace the entire front panel for $125.  While I was researching this stupid, preventable issue, I found that many LG owners have the same problem.  You see, the letters come right off if you are stupid enough to drape a stained baseball uniform (or any stained clothing) over the front of the washer and spray it with a stain remover like Shout.  How can the product managers for this machine be so bad?

They're not the only professionals who are quite bad at what they do.  Sales Managers underperform at a mind boggling level.  Let me show you the degree to which most sales managers are unqualified.

Let's begin our story with sales management candidates - those candidates looking for a sales management gig.  Objective Management Group's (OMG) recommendation rate for sales management candidates is only 14.8% with another 14.1% on the fringes leaving 71% of all candidates not recommended!  More than two out of three candidates for sales management roles don't qualify!

The next question is why not?

One third of all candidates are knocked out for having low scores in Will to Manage Sales.  This group of five sales management competencies includes Desire for Sales Management Success, Commitment to achieving greater sales management success, Outlook, Responsibility and Motivation.

42% of all candidates are knocked out for having Sales Management DNA scores that are too low.  Sales Management DNA consists of five competencies which together are a combination of strengths that support a sales manager's ability to coach to and enforce sales process, sales strategies, sales tactics, sales methodology, sales pipeline and CRM compliance.  When the score dips below a certain point, those competencies become weaknesses.

16% of all candidates are knocked out for scoring too low on the Sales Coaching competency and another 61% are on the fringes.  That's another way of saying that only 23% of all candidates have the Sales Coaching competency as a strength and when sales managers are supposed to be spending half of their time on coaching, that's seriously useless.

Ugh.

There are a couple of different ways to look at this.  Companies that are serious about building strong sales cultures and following best practices use OMG's sales management candidate assessments and say, "No big deal.  That's why we use OMG to assess sales and sales management candidates!"  Companies that don't use OMG probably don't even notice because the candidates are probably no worse than most of the sales managers already working there.

That brings us to the bigger problem.  Six out of every seven sales managers SUCK!

What does that mean for you?

Most sales managers don't coach enough, don't coach consistently, don't coach the right way, don't impact their salespeople's opportunities, don't grow their salespeople, don't inspire their salespeople, don't hold their salespeople accountable, suck at recruiting new salespeople, spend too much time on personal sales and compiling reports, and not nearly enough time developing the talent on their teams.  More on this topic.

I spoke with the two senior-most executives of a national company who admitted that they've been trying to build a sales organization for ten years.  They said they "don't know what they don't know."  That doesn't actually differentiate them from most executives.  What does differentiate them is that they admitted it!  Unfortunately, admitting that they don't know what they don't know doesn't solve anything.  They must also be willing to follow advice, follow through and stick with it and that's easier said than done. Building a sales culture that rocks means starting with the right sales manager in place.  Always.

The challenge is to understand the importance of having the right sales managers.  If you run a company with a small sales team, you're lying to yourself if you think that you can manage salespeople in your spare time.  Just. Not. True.  If you run a larger company with a larger sales team, you're lying to yourself if you think that as long as you hire the right sales talent any sales manager will do.  Right up until the good salespeople quit.  If you have multiple sales teams, with more layers between the C Suite and the salespeople, sales managers receive less scrutiny, are more independent, and play an even more important role in executing the company's strategy.  You're lying to yourself if you think that having any sales manager with industry experience will get the job done.

Sales Managers are the LG washing machines of the sales profession and the people they report to are the enablers that allow that inferior product to exist.

Time to towel off.