What kind of car should you drive?

Answering that question with anything other than, "It depends," is irresponsible because there are so many variables.  Choosing a car depends on budget, family size, how much stuff you load into your car, the length of your drives, the logo/ego influence, fit and function, ergonomics, appearance, perceived value, reliability, cost to drive it (gas/electric/mileage), and so much more.   

If that makes senses, why do companies struggle when I am unable to instantly tell them what their win-rate or closing percentage should be?

There are many variables that can influence your sales win-rate and I am sharing my top ten keys to identifying appropriate ideal win rates:

1. Which stage of the pipeline is the win-rate calculated from?  Lead? Suspect? Prospect? Qualified, Closable?  It should be obvious that a higher win-rate correlates to measuring win-rates from the latest stage of the sales pipeline.
   
   
2. How much competition is there? A higher win-rate will correlate with fewer competitors.
   
   
3. How effectively do your salespeople handle the existence of competitors? Only 27% of all salespeople have Sales DNA that supports the mindset necessary for eliminating the competition.  This soars to 61% of the top salespeople and 1% of the least effective salespeople.  Higher win-rates correlate with the ability to eliminate the competition.
   
   
4. How does your pricing compare?  We can talk about selling value until the end of sales cycles, but if your salespeople haven't mastered selling value (consultative selling skills and a sales process that supports it are required), then the purchase will be based on price.  A higher-win rate will correlate with a competitive price in a transactional sale but in a value-based sale, higher win-rates will correlate with the amount of perceived value.  Only 31% of salespeople are value sellers.  This increases to 95% of top salespeople and NONE of the least effective salespeople!
   
   
5. What is the length of your sales cycle? The answer to the sales cycle question is less definitive.  On the one hand, long sales cycles are very much about the survival of the fittest and fewer competitors lead to a higher win-rate.  On the other hand, long sales cycles are fraught with risk because many of these complex projects become de-prioritized, abandoned, or indefinitely delayed.  Only 38% of all salespeople possess the capabilities to shorten long sales cycles, thereby gaining a competitive advantage.  73% of top salespeople have this ability but very few of the least effective salespeople.
   
   
6. Is there a sales scorecard?  A properly built scorecard awards points to conditions that are predictive of a win.  A higher win-rate correlates with higher scores.  Only 20% of all salespeople use a sales scorecard. 40% of top salespeople use a scorecard only 5% of the least effective salespeople use a scorecard. An 800% gap!
   
   
7. How disciplined is the sales team?  It requires discipline to follow the sales process, fully qualify opportunities, and not pursue opportunities that fail to meet the minimum required score.  Discipline is also required to refrain from quoting opportunities that cannot be won. A higher win-rate correlates to discipline.
   
   
8. When are proposals and quotes provided?  Ideally, you would only provide a proposal for an opportunity on which you have already received a verbal go-ahead for which your proposal is simply a formality.  It should go without saying that a higher-win rate correlates to proposals as a formality.  80% of all salespeople are compelled to quote and/or propose and this is a very difficult mindset to change.
   
   
9. What is the overall sales capability of your sales team?  We see team scores range from the 30's to the 60's.  It should go without saying that a higher win-rate correlates to a higher sales team capability score.
   
   
10. How strong are the relationships with your prospects and customers?  While this is difficult for anyone to know, it should still be obvious that high win-rates correlate with strong relationships. 47% of salespeople have strong relationships but that goes to 61% for the best salespeople and just 31% for the least effective salespeople.
    
    

These ten factors help to determine what your win-rate is TODAY. High quality and ongoing sales training, sales coaching and daily role-playing maximize your ability to IMPROVE the win rate going forward, especially when the focus in on an optimized, milestone-centric and customer focused sales process, a consultative approach that develops listening and questioning skills, and the many nuances of selling value.  A higher win-rate correlates with more training, coaching and role-playing.

The statistics and data shared in this article are from Objective Management Group's (OMG) evaluations and assessments on more than 2.3 million salespeople.  OMG measures all 21 Sales Core Competencies and an average of 10 attributes in each competency.  You can view all 21 sales competencies here, and see how the scores compare for salespeople by percentile, in various industries, and even at your company. It's free to look!

Image copyright 123RD  

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

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

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

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

There are two ironic byproducts of the inbound phenomenon:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Not bad.

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

But not to worry.

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

How do you know if you work for an underdog?

The characteristics of an underdog are:

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

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

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

Image copyright 123RF 

For those of you who are familiar with my series of articles about Bob - the worst salesperson ever - you can catch up by enjoying, laughing, and making fun of him here.  12 of the articles that show up on that page are about Bob!

Today, I reviewed the worst OMG evaluation of a sales manager that I have ever seen.  It was literally the worst because he was in the 1 percentile, meaning that 99% of all sales managers are stronger than he is.  

As I reviewed it, I said to myself, "If Bob were promoted to sales manager (I don't even want to put that thought out there), this is what it would look like."

There are so many reasons as to why he is so bad and I'll share the most important reasons below.

The first thing I noticed was his score of 19 on the Sales Coaching competency.  He lacks the skills and perhaps thankfully, he doesn't actually do any coaching but when his salespeople ask for help the only help they get is technical or pricing help.

Did you see the score of 15 for Pipeline Management?  Those 15 points are because he does pipeline reviews --- by himself!  Can you believe it? A sales manager that doesn't review the pipeline with his salespeople!

Even if he wanted to coach and hold his salespeople accountable, he wouldn't be able to because they don't even like him.  OMG's Sales Team evaluation showed that his salespeople don't trust his intentions, they don't respect him, and worst of all, he is focused on himself, instead of his team.  He takes credit for wins and points his finger at them for losses.  Trust, respect, relationships and team focus are prerequisites for coaching to have any chance of working - and that's assuming that there will actually be coaching .

His score for holding salespeople accountable was even worse, coming in at zero. All of his salespeople made excuses for their lack of performance and he does not challenge them on their excuses because he too is an excuse maker as evidenced by his Responsibility score of zero.

Then there is his Sales Management DNA.  For the simplest of sales management roles, a sales manager should have a minimum Sales Management DNA of at least 68 and much higher for more demanding roles, with minimums ranging from 72-82.  His Sales Management DNA is only 52 and it was skewed up because of his one strong DNA score of 83 for the Comfortable Discussing Money competency. 

Without that one strong score bringing up Sales Management DNA his DNA score would have been in the 40's!  I've never seen one that low before!

The two bright spots are that he scored 68 on the Sales Process competency, and 77 on Selling Value.

His Sales VP really likes him and she doesn't want to lose him. She is hoping and praying that he can be trained and coached up to be a more effective Sales Manager.  Unfortunately, his score for Commitment to Sales Management success is only 30.  With a Commitment score this low, there is very little chance that he will do the work, overcome his weaknesses or change.

Only 18% of all Sales Managers should be in a sales management role and only 7% are any good at coaching salespeople and this individual should not even be in sales.

Image copyright 123RF

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.

If I created a list of the top sitcoms of all time, I could end up with a list that includes the following shows:

• Friends
• Seinfeld
• The Office
• Everybody Loves Raymond
• The Cosby Show
• How I Met Your Mother
• All in the Family
• I Love Lucy
• Cheers
• Family Guy

If I sent out a survey and asked you to vote on the top sitcoms of all time, the list would have 100 sitcoms to choose from and we might end up with a list that looks like this one.

The keys to these two questions and hypothetical lists are that the first list is my opinion and the second list would be the results of a survey, a popularity contest, or opinions of the masses.

While that's all fine and good when it represents people's opinions of pop culture, it's not fine and good when it comes to business best practices, assessments that could impact whether an individual is offered a job, or even business processes.

More specific to the topic of this Blog, Sales Core Competencies, Sales Candidate Assessments, and Sales Processes cannot be created from popular opinion, surveys or personal bias.  

Conduct a Google search for attributes of successful salespeople and you'll see a page with these results:

These articles include the opinions of college professors, writers and editors reporting on survey results, and people sharing their opinions.  For example, Hubspot, an inbound marketing company published a list of 18 Sales Core Competencies which include non-sales competencies like customer service and data analysis.  Job site Indeed published a list of 18 Sales Core Competencies which include non-sales competencies like leadership and change management.  I'm not suggesting that these capabilities aren't important, but in no way, shape or form should they be considered core sales competencies.  Why would people turn to any of these lists of opinions when there is a widely accepted, definitive list of 21 Sales Core Competencies backed by science and data on more than 2.3 million salespeople?  Perhaps it is a byproduct of Information overload and confusion.  People don't always find the accurate list on their first try.

The same thing happens when you search for sales candidate assessments.  Pages and pages of assessments all claiming to be the one that will prevent you from making a sales hiring mistake.  Most of them are not even sales assessments.  Instead they are personality assessments being marketed as sales assessments.  Again, why use an imposter when the real, accurate and predictive sales candidate assessment is right there, among the choices?  There are simply too many opinions and too much misinformation, as I wrote about earlier this week.   

When it comes to sales process the choices are even worse.  Consider this article about how most sales processes are so old. Yet there they are, being positioned as the solution for selling in the modern era.  More surprising, companies are using them but despite that, there are solid sales processes and useful CRM applications that work in perfect harmony, although you do need experts you can trust to point you in the right direction.

Once upon a time I would have been tempted to use a phrase like, "follow the science" but thanks to years of internet misinformation, it is difficult to know who to trust, who are the true experts and which science is real science. Unfortunately, we must default to skepticism, not trust, the subject of Malcom Gladwell's book, Talking to Strangers which I wrote about last week.

I'll tell you what I think but I'm biased too.  I believe in what I've developed over the past 37 years but maybe that's all you need to know.  37 years of time-tested, proven, reliable, accurate and predictive results backed by science.

There is no sales assessment more accurate and predictive than Objective Management Group's (OMG) Sales Candidate Assessment. Period.. 

Not coincidentally, OMG measures all 21 Sales Core Competencies in detail, providing more than 200 data points on each sales candidate along with our recommendation as to whether the candidate will succeed in the role under consideration.  See the competencies, average scores, and sort by industry or company for free.  You can even see how your salespeople compare here.

When it comes to sales process, it's hard to top Baseline Selling, a staged, customizable, milestone-centric, customer focused sales process based on sales best practices.  Baseline Selling is at its best when integrated into Membrain's easily customized, intelligent, process-based CRM application.

Finding the truth is only difficult when you place too much importance on opinions, surveys and writers.

Image copyright CNN

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.

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.

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

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

And then Panera wasn't a problem anymore.

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

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

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

Maybe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Isn't it awesome when you learn about new tricks your computer, phone or software can do that you weren't previously aware of? I've been using a number of new widgets on the home screen of my iPhone 13 and I love how quickly I can get or enter information!

Isn't it fascinating when you thought you knew what a product was all about but you were wrong?  A client was having great success using OMG (Objective Management Group) to assess their sales candidates and they assumed the sales candidate assessment was the only thing OMG offered.  When they learned that our core offering is evaluating their existing sales team they became excited about what that would mean for addressing their two biggest selling challenges.  

One of their issues was their 20% win rate was much lower than they thought it should be and they believed their salespeople needed some refresher training on closing.  They also had a large number of opportunities stalled in the pipeline and they believed that training on more effective techniques to conduct follow up calls would help.

In this article, I thought it might help if I share a bit of what they learned about their sales team.

It turns out that they didn't have either a follow up or a closing problem.  The three biggest issues were that their salespeople were:

1. Not reaching the individuals who actually made the decisions to buy their services.  They knew they had to reach that person and  reaching that high in the organization was a milestone in their sales process but only 7% of the sales team was having any success doing that.  We also learned that the salespeople who did get to the decision maker were 400% more likely to close the business than the others on the team.
   
   
   
   
2. Somewhat ineffective at Discovery and as such, were not uncovering compelling reasons for their prospects to buy.  Without compelling reasons, there was a lack of urgency and without urgency, there was nothing compelling their initial contacts to get the decision makers involved or the money approved.  The salespeople were simply not getting their prospects beyond "nice to have."
   
3. Not selling value. They were focused on selling value, but because they were not uncovering compelling reasons to buy, they were unable to communicate their value in terms that would resonate with their prospects.  As a result, by the time the opportunity was proposal-ready, 50% had reverted to price-based opportunities.

These three issues were not the only issues facing this company but to give you a sense for how crucial these three issues are, read the next sentence three times.  If they were to do nothing else, but they relentlessly trained, coached and role-played these three issues, they would double their win rate next near. DOUBLE THEIR WIN RATE!

Some companies learn that their issues lie within their pipelines because the opportunities are not well qualified or scored.  Other companies learn that their problem is the company's ineffective sales process.  Some companies discover that the problems have more to do with not having the right salespeople in the right sales roles, a selection problem.  At other companies, we learn the problem is ineffective sales management, due to ineffective coaching and/or accountability.  Motivation is the problem at some companies while the thing that looks and sounds like complacency is often a problem with lack of Commitment.

Some companies have sales teams that aren't very effective developing relationships while others have trouble leveraging the relationships to generate revenue.  I've seen some sales teams that weren't very effective at building trust and credibility while other companies had hired salespeople whose Sales DNA wasn't strong enough to differentiate their higher priced products or services in the C Suite.

The problems I mentioned above are a small sampling of the many issues OMG identifies and it might surprise you to learn that many sales teams have all of these problems and more.

You can't fix the sales problems you can't measure.

When you scientifically measure exactly what the sales problems are, who has the problems, to what extent those problems exist and what the complimentary problems might be, you can begin to determine exactly what kind of development, training, coaching, and even organizational changes are required.

Or, you can do what this company was about to do before they evaluated their sales team and hire a sales training company to train on the latest and greatest closing and follow up techniques. After reading the story, you will understand that what they thought they needed for sales training would have never helped - not even a little!

If you are interested in learning more about having your sales team evaluated, you can email me and I'll get your request to the right person. If you don't want to hear from anyone (an example of a non-supportive selling belief that lowers Sales DNA), you can head to this site where you can get started on your own for free.  Full disclosure, at some point you will still have to speak to someone and pony up to receive the deliverables.

Image copyright 123RF 

A few years had passed since the last time I wrecked an hbr.com (Harvard Business Review online) article about sales.  If you haven't been reading the Blog for the last sixteen years you may have missed my previous fourteen take downs.

Why Do You Think Harvard Business Review Does This When it Comes to Sales?
The Challenge of the Challenger Sales Model - The Facts
Harvard Business Review Blog Off Target on Sales Greatness
Harvard Business Review Blog Post Gets Salespeople Wrong
Harvard Business Review Hit and Then Missed the Mark on Sales
How Wrong is the Harvard Business Review Article on How to Hire Salespeople?
Revealing Study of Salespeople Makes News at HBR
Another HBR Article on Sales Leaves Me with Mixed Feelings
Top 10 Questions for Salespeople to Ask and Stay Away From
What Customers Expect From Your Salespeople and More
HBR or OMG - Whose Criteria Really Differentiate the Top and Bottom 10% of Salespeople?
More Junk Sales Science in HBR Blog
Now That You Have a Sales Process, Never Mind
Is SELLING an Afterthought in Today's Sales Model?  

Dan Caramanico alerted me to this dubious September 19, hbr.com article that explains their 5 Skills Every Salesperson Needs to Succeed.  It took three consultants to screw in the lightbulb that illuminates their five stupid-as-shit skills so let's take a look:

The five skills they claim everyone should have are not sales skills at all.  In their defense, their title doesn't state they are sales skills, but instead, skills that salespeople need to have.  As you read these, ask yourself, does EVERY salesperson need these skills, do certain salespeople need these skills, or do any salespeople need these skills?

1. Anticipating the Customer's Tomorrow
2. Collaborating Inside and Out
3. Leveraging Digital and Virtual Channels
4. Ability to Get Power from Data
5. Capacity to Adapt

The three authors looked at sales job postings on Indeed and extracted their five skills of choice by looking at some of the requirements listed by enterprise companies, like Apple, Grainger, Microsoft, Pfizer, Bank of America and 3M.

Enterprise companies are rarely representative of small, medium and mid-market companies.  If we study industries that are considered old-school, like industrial distribution or building materials, they wouldn't even consider skills like these being associated with sales.  They're just learning what CRM is!

Let's look more closely at #3, digital and virtual.  This requirement simply states that salespeople must be able to use the tools that all salespeople have learned to use, like Zoom, LinkedIn, MS Office, and CRM.  In this day and age, those requirements are no different than twenty years ago when it was a requirement for a salesperson to have typing skills!

If we look at the top five sales skills that every salesperson - EVERY SALESPERSON IN EVERY ROLE - needs to have in order to succeed, I would choose these (data courtesy of Objective Management Group (OMG):

1. Reaches Decision Makers - you can have all five of the skills listed in the hbr.com article but if a salesperson can't reach and meet with the decision maker, the skills listed above and below cannot be leveraged.  Salespeople who reach decision makers are 341% more likely to close the business.
2. Consultative Seller - Salespeople must uniquely differentiate themselves and provide the prospect with an ideal solution that is both cost and needs appropriate.  The best way to do that is with a consultative approach based on excellent listening and questioning skills, attributes of the Consultative Seller competency at which only 11% of all salespeople are strong
3. Value Selling - The ability to sell at a profitable margin is very important to most companies.  Selling Value is the skill that drives profit but it requires a set of beliefs, strategies and tactics to support the effort.  Simply spouting off a company's value proposition will not get the job done.  Only 31% of all salespeople have Selling Value as a strength.
4. Qualifying - The win rate is driven by a salesperson's ability to thoroughly qualify an opportunity and there is a direct correlation between unqualified and lost, and fully qualified and won.  Only 21% of all salespeople have the Qualifying Competency as a strength.
5. Sales Process - A custom staged, milestone-centric, customer-focused sales process will support and enhance a salesperson's ability to use a consultative approach, sell value and thoroughly qualify a decision maker's ability to buy.  Only 34% of all salespeople have Sales Process as a strength.

These five skills are Sales Core Competencies at which all salespeople must be good.  Compare these five competencies to the five skills in the hbr.com article and you will easily see that their five skills, without my five competencies, won't get a deal done.  On the flip side, I would argue that my five competencies, even without their five skills, will still get a deal done.

There are 21 Sales Core Competencies with an average of 8 attributes per competency.  OMG measures all 21 of them and there is an online tool where you can see the data behind all 21 Sales Core Competencies and break it down by industry and Sales Percentile.  OMG has assessed 2,253,218 salespeople.