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

You may have read that the latest legislation out of Washington DC provides $80 billion for the hiring, arming and training of close to 80,000 new IRS (Internal Revenue Service is the US Tax Agency) agents to nearly double the size of the agency.  Did you catch the part about arming IRS agents?  Wow. That makes the IRS larger than the State Department, Customs and Border Control, the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and the Pentagon (Military) combined.  Did I mention that 70,000 of them will be armed?  They also want to make sure that corporations pay their fair share so this legislation imposes a minimum 15% tax on corporations.

Why are they making these two moves and what does it have to do with selling?  Stay tuned and I'll try to answer both questions.

The primary point of today's article is to point out the irony of hiring 80,000 agents but you'll have to read a bit of background before I can point out the irony.

So why are they hiring 80,000 IRS agents?

They want the rich to pay their fair share and that sounds fair, but let's go beyond the headline and general talking point.  There are 724 billionaires in the US (of 2,775 worldwide) and it's not that hard to find a millionaire because there are 20 million of them in the US (50 million worldwide).  If they target billionaires it would work out to 110 new agents per billionaire.  Sounds like overkill.  They also want to make sure that corporations pay their fair share so this legislation imposes a minimum 15% tax on corporations. 

Let's focus on the 15% tax for a moment. I can think of only three ways for corporations to deal with that surcharge:

1. Raise prices.  They've been raising prices throughout the supply chain crisis and the two years of inflation so additional price increases don't seem like they would be good business decisions.
2. Lay-offs.  To illustrate how the math works, let's take a corporation generating $10 billion with pre-tax earnings of $1 billion.  A 15% tax would be $150 million.  They will probably layoff workers, not executives and the average  US worker earns just short of $52,000. That corporation would need to layoff 2,885 workers to pay that tax.  Or, if they need to purchase equipment they'll either delay the purchase  or layoff even more workers.  If they delay or even cancel the purchase, that will negatively impact salespeople and the companies that sell equipment to this corporation.
3. Move operations out of the country.  In this scenario, everyone gets laid off, no taxes are paid by either the company or the laid off employees, and nothing gets sold to this company in the US. Salespeople and their companies lose here too.  When companies move operations off-shore, and with fewer customers for the companies serving them to sell to, they too must lay-off employees.

This impacts every one of the 56,000 companies generating $100 million and up. Do the math. If we were to be really, really conservative and pretend that all 56,000 companies generated only $100 million each, that would result in layoffs of only 1% of my earlier example, or less than 30 layoffs per company.  The math says that if you multiply 30 by 56,000 companies there would be nearly 2 million layoffs among the 56,000 companies, huge spending freezes, and delayed closings as the economy slows like gridlock at rush-hour.  Only it will be much worse.  Nearly 14,000 of those companies actually generate more than $500 million (2 million layoffs among the 14,000 companies) and 9,000 companies generate more than $1 billion (2.6 million layoffs among the 9,000 companies).  That's a total of 6.5 million lay-offs before we consider the ripple effect to the millions of SMB's.

Does anyone in Congress know even a little bit about economics and how business works?  Around 175 senators and congressmen have law degrees, so probably not!

Back to the IRS and then the irony of the policy.  80,000 new agents will run out of large companies to audit really quickly.  It's less than one company per new agent so who will they audit next? There aren't enough large corporations, billionaires and millionaires for such a huge army of agents so it's obvious that they will be targeting another group next.  It was reported that small businesses will be targeted because big companies can afford teams of lawyers and accountants to drag out the audit process but 17 million small businesses are much easier to audit and assess and then from which to collect additional taxes. Auditing small business owners is the path of least resistance!

Let's dig into the irony.

For the past 3-4 years, companies that have attempted to hire salespeople have found a limited number of candidates overall and even fewer quality, qualified candidates. When they hold out for the good candidates, instead of 30 days it is taking 3-6 months to get new salespeople hired and half the time, another company swoops in and hires the candidate before they can.  This is the experience companies are having today despite the existence of nearly 6 million professional salespeople to target in the US.   So how in the world will the IRS possibly hire 80,000 new agents when there are only around 1.4 million accountants in the USA and only 650,000 of them are CPAs?

Both parts of this legislation couldn't possibly make sense to anyone who can do math, who knows how business works, who knows anything about economics, or who knows what companies do with their earnings.  It is a stupid policy and stupid policy is probably an oxymoron.

If the 15% minimum tax policy becomes a super spreader for the recession it will impact salespeople and companies where it hurts the most by significantly depressing revenues and earnings. If that happens, the 15% tax won't be such a big deal because there won't be any earnings to tax.  So there's that.

To prepare for a more difficult selling environment, sales teams must learn how to grind it out to book difficult-to-schedule meetings, differentiate and sell value, overcome resistance, and reach the only person in the company who can make an exception to a spending freeze.

There are three steps to getting your team to this point:

1. Evaluate the sales team to find out who can become proficient at these competencies, how big the gaps are, how much better the sales team can become, how much more revenue they can generate, what it will take to get them there in the area of sales process optimizations, methodology, training and coaching.
2. Train and coach the ever-living hell out of your sales managers so that they can become great at coaching salespeople and holding them accountable.
3. Train and coach the ever-living hell out of your salespeople.

You can find inspiration anywhere.  Even in a book called, A Year of Playing Catch.  Tom Schaff was nice enough to send me a copy of this book and there was the inspiration, right there on page 128.  Why would someone from the world of sales care about a page out of a baseball book?  I'll give you fourteen really good reasons.  You see, the book is much less about baseball and much more about the following fourteen integral competencies of sales success:

1. Relationships 
2. Goal setting, planning and execution 
3. Story Telling
4. Commitment
5. Rejection
6. Persistence
7. Listening and Asking Questions
8. Being of Value
9. Presentation Skills
10. Outlook
11. Controlling Emotions
12. Messaging and Posturing
13. Being Coachable
14. Developing Supportive Beliefs

With that said, this is what author Ethan D. Bryan wrote on page 128 and I quote:

It is hard to admit that I am not good enough, that my sheer passion for the game doesn't translate to on-field ability and seven-figure success.  That's the fear anyone faces when they try out for a team, when they take a test, when they apply for a job--that they will be judged and deemed not good enough.  Life is filled with "not good enough" moments.

Unrequited affection.
Seeking a promotion.
Implementing new diet and exercise routines.

"Baseball is life," Mary said.  "Anything you learn from or about baseball can be applied to your daily life, to any relationship you have.  When I observe ballplayers, those who succeed are the ones who absorb the lessons in front of them instead of getting angry.  Anger prevents them from being successful.  That's the difference.  It's not about talent, really, but harnessing the energy and not allowing their emotions to master them.  They know how to make their emotions work for them, so the result is what they want."

How are you supposed to reply to being told you're not good enough?

You don't throw hard enough to play varsity.
Your grades aren't good enough for the scholarship.
There are better applicants for the position.

Those moments I have sat with my not-good-enoughness are initially met with a melancholic disappointment.  I console myself with the simple, honest truth:  At least I tried.  I held nothing back and gave it my best effort. I poured my heart into it and have no regrets.  Those words, often accompanied by a Dr. Pepper and a donut, are usually sufficient encouragement to short-circuit my pity party and keep me dreaming. 

How are you supposed to reply when you know you're good enough but life prevents you from getting a chance?

End quote. Pivoting back to Dave Kurlan now.

Ethan set out on a quest to play catch with someone different every day for a year.  He wrote about every one of those 365 days in his blog here.

Each time a salesperson fails to schedule a meeting, reach the decision maker, uncover a compelling reason to buy, create urgency, qualify the opportunity and win the business, the reality is that in that moment, on that day, during that sales cycle, with that prospect, against their competition, for whatever reason, they were not good enough.  Accepting not good enough is taking responsibility.  Accepting not good enough means there is room for improvement.  Accepting not good enough suggests there is an opportunity for growth.  Accepting not good enough opens the door for coaching.

If Ethan could play a game of catch with somebody every single day of the year, can't you take the same amount of time to improve your sales, sales management or sales leadership skills every day of the year?

The shit show known as 2020.  Many of us have heard that term used to describe this uniquely strange year.  Despite everything unusual about 2020, there have been some normalcies too.  We celebrated births, birthdays, anniversaries, Mother's and Father's Days, and we will all celebrate the upcoming holidays.  The gatherings might be smaller and more localized, but the holiday won't pass by without us.  These are all Milestones.

Objective Management Group (OMG) celebrated some milestones this year too.  In January we celebrated our 30th Anniversary, in August we processed our 2 millionth sales assessment and in September we updated the industry standard 21 Sales Core Competencies.  Milestones are important.  How are they important to sales success?

Milestones are also the most important components of a strong, reliable, predictive sales process. 

Without specific milestones that must be reached in each stage of the sales process, there is no sales process!

Back in the early 90's, in the very early days of OMG, only 9% of all salespeople had and/or followed a sales process.  While that has improved dramatically in the last 30 years, to 45%, it is still way too low.  Check out these findings.

Sales Process is only one of twenty-one Sales Core Competencies yet it correlates perfectly with sales percentile.  As you can see, the best salespeople are 94% more likely to have and follow a sales process while 83% of weak salespeople, the bottom half of all salespeople, are out there winging it!  And when it comes to all salespeople, 55% are winging it.  Hmmm.  That's pretty close to the 57% who don't hit quota, isn't it?

Consider that salespeople who are just winging it usually have milestones.  For example, most lousy salespeople have conceptual milestones for things like:

• Getting on an approved vendor list
• Quoting
• Submitting a Proposal
• Scheduling a Demo
• Getting a Prospect to Agree to a Trial

There is nothing wrong with these milestones unless they are the only milestones in a company's or salesperson's sales process. Unfortunately, that's what we usually see, with salespeople looking to achieve late stage milestones without meeting the ten to fifteen crucial milestones that must be achieved PRIOR to the five listed above. A best-practices sales process has at least four stages (think in terms of stages like suspect, prospect, qualified, closable) with each stage having between three and eight measurable milestones.  

Skipping a single milestone can have devastating consequences.  Imagine what can happen when salespeople skip ten to fifteen milestones! 

Very often, companies lacking the appropriate milestones in its sales process have win rates below 15%.  Companies that get their sales processes customized and optimized with predictive scorecards get their win rates up to near 80%!  If yours isn't that high, there's a good chance that sales process is at the top of the list of root causes. 

To get a better sense for what a sales process should look like, and how popular sales processes compare, check out this 11--minute video that I recorded four years ago.

Milestones are important.  One of your milestones should be to make your sales process as structured and predictive as your accounting, operations, manufacturing, programming, legal, shipping or engineering processes.  It is irresponsible for your sales process to not be as solid and well-thought out as each of your other processes. Sales success drives revenue and profit. Why would you allow the single process that drives revenue and profit to suffer from lack of professional attention. 

Sales is not some fluffy art-form that can be molded to the whims of each salesperson!  Sales is more like a software application where the science lies under the hood in its code and the art or personality is infused into the look, feel and easy-to-navigate user interface.  Sales science lies in the sales process and methodology and the art or personality is infused by the salesperson to have a friendly, easy and enticing conversation with the prospect.

Image copyright 123 RF

Would a NFL Quarterback make a good MLB pitcher?  Would a star MLB hitter be a great Pro Golfer?  Would an all-star NBA Center be an effective Lacrosse player?

Right now, an event is occurring on the world stage that shows, in a very persuasive way, why success in sales isn't always transferrable from one company, industry or role to another.

For example, a startup storage technology company hired all the salespeople they could get from the most well-known and well-respected company in their space.  The leadership team expected that these experienced and credible salespeople would leverage the new company's great new technology and cause sales to take off like a rocket for Storageville (made up name).  It didn't happen.

Another company hired a Sales VP from a well-known Fortune 1000 company and believed that his experience would make it easy for him to build a top-performing sales organization like the one he ran at Fortuneville (made up name).  It didn't happen.

These two examples aren't exceptions to the rule.  They are the rule.  But the rule to what?  I'll explain the context for the rule and explain the event that serves as such a great example.

In our first example, a start-up - that means UNDERDOG - hired salespeople from the #1 company in their space.  The problem with salespeople who work for the biggest and best companies in the world is that they don't have to be very good salespeople.  They don't encounter much resistance because they rarely face opposition to a first meeting and often have the red carpet rolled out for them when they arrive.  They don't actually need to sell because buying from them is the safe decision and buyers don't get fired for choosing #1.  And they don't need to sell value because their company's deep pockets allow them to discount and "buy" market share.  When those salespeople move over to the startup they quickly find themselves overmatched for what they are about to encounter.  Suddenly, prospects don't want to schedule meetings, are very resistant, believe there is tremendous risk in trying something new, and won't commit to anything.  The salespeople, never having faced this level of resistance before, don't really know how to overcome or manage it and they quickly fail in a very big way.

In our second example, the hotshot VP arrives with much fanfare but quickly learns that while expectations are great, resources are scarce and he has one fewer layer of management between him and his team.  He is not a roll up your sleeves kind of guy and hasn't actually performed the kind of coaching that this sales team requires to help them overcome the resistance that he never had to face.  While the average tenure of a Sales VP is around 18 months, he's gone after just 10 and the company is back to the drawing board.

And then, the biggest and most obvious example of all.  An individual who successfully ran a huge enterprise unexpectedly changed industries, roles and organizations.  He was the sole decision maker at his previous company but now he has a much larger and empowered leadership team and can no longer make the decisions without support from others. He trusted his family to the most important leadership roles at his prior company but he has struggled to hire and retain leaders that are aligned with his vision in the new organization.  Everyone in his prior company was on the same team and supported and executed the business plan. In the new organization, there are those who seek to undermine his authority, goals and plan, and he has enemies and opponents actually working for him.   

Only time will tell whether this person achieves the same level of success as President of the United States or he goes up in flames and fails to complete his term in Governmentville (made up name).  But make no mistake about it.  On the public stage for all to see is the greatest example of how success in one company or industry does not necessarily translate to success in another.  The challenges are different, the resources are different and the levels of resistance vary most of all.

The next time you decide to hire, my 3 rules of thumb will make your experience simpler and more successful:

1. Target candidates who have already done what you need them to do.  If you are an UNDERDOG then find someone who has already done exactly what you need for another UNDERDOG.
2. Only you can determine whether or not you like someone well enough for them to join your team.  Use OMG to help you select those who will succeed in a sales, sales management or sales leadership candidates at your company.  It's been the most accurate and predictive sales specific assessment on the planet for 7 consecutive years.
3. Assess immediately after candidates complete an online application.  Use the assessment's recommendations to determine who you will invest time interviewing.  The worst thing you can do is fall in love with a candidate who later turns out to be not recommended.

Image Copyright iStock Photos

In my last article, we discussed big data and big lies in the sales assessment space and touched on OMG's 230,000,000 data points.  Most of the data points are very consistent across cultures and continents, but there is one that varies wildly depending on the role, the country, and the culture.

One of the many OMG findings is "Enjoys Selling."  Recently, we performed an analysis of those salespeople who had Strong Desire and Strong Commitment toward sales success, but who did not Enjoy Selling and were not Motivated.  It is a very rare combination - we see it in only 1 in 400 salespeople - except in countries, cultures and companies where the emphasis is on hiring entry-level salespeople.  Then, the rate of occurrence can be as high as 1 in 200.  Still rare, but twice as likely to occur.  To put this in context, fewer than 5% of salespeople don't enjoy selling, and fewer than 5% aren't motivated.  But only 1 in 400 have both of these as weaknesses, yet still have both strong Desire and Commitment.  Who are these salespeople?  How can they be committed and have strong desire, but not enjoy it or be motivated? Intrigued?

I don't have a scientific answer for this question, but I do have some possibilities.

Some feel obligated to sell.  They are in a family business and they are part of the family.  They feel obligated to a parent, grandparent, spouse, uncle, aunt or in-law.

Some are selling for the first time and they want to succeed - at whatever they do. They are pushing through - not because they enjoy selling and feel motivated to sell - because they have a need to get their careers off to a good start.

Some are aging career salespeople and need to succeed because they are nearing retirement.  They no longer enjoy selling and no longer feel motivated to sell, but they are pushing through out of necessity.

So if this anomaly represents such a small percentage of salespeople, why did I bother to write about it?

Because you might have one of these people working for or applying for a job one day and you should understand the hidden factors that will have an affect on their results.

According to recent Gallop research, there is a 20% improvement in sales when companies select the right salespeople.  OMG can help you select the right salespeople with the most accurate and predictive sales candidate assessment and the one that has been named the Top Sales Candidate Assessment for 5 consecutive years.

The Tenfold Blog quoted 20 Business and Sales Leaders on what they believe is the #1 Trait of Superstar Salespeople.  It's very difficult to narrow selling down to 1 trait, but 20 of us did exactly that and you can see what we all had to say.  As a reader of this blog, I don't believe that you will be able to agree with half of the 20 quotes!  Compare that with this article on the 10 Differences Between Sales Winners and Losers.

Finally, the list of the Top Sales Books for Summer Reading was released and you can get that here.  Yes, my best-seller, Baseline Selling is on the list again.  When I wrote this article on Sunday evening, it was sitting at #13 on the list of best-selling sales books on Amazon.com despite being published 11 years ago! 

Commitment Continuum is a trademark of the Jansen Sports Leadership Center and the image is from their website.

This week we found ourselves sitting in camp chairs, bundled up in warm coats, wearing winter gloves and covered in blankets, to watch our son play on his Middle School baseball team.  The only thing this team could win is the Bad News Bears Look-Alike Contest.  He also plays on a very talented travel team, so this school game was not only awful to watch, it was doubly awful because of the winter weather.  Yes, there was snow in the air.  We will attend nearly every single 1 of the 100 games he will play for 5 teams this year.  Many people would say that...

• We aren't required to go (some parents drop-off.)
• He doesn't ask us to watch (he's very independent.)
• We don't have to attend as many as we do (half would be more than most parents.)
• It is rarely convenient (some games are at 3:30 PM.)
• Games are rarely played in beautiful weather (too hot in July and August, too cold in April, and too wet or humid the rest of the time).
• There is rarely comfortable seating (thus the not quite as uncomfortable camp chairs).
• There are other things we need to do.
• Double Headers on Saturdays and Sundays take up most of the weekend.
• School games and Little League games on the same day take up most of the afternoon and evening.
• It's baseball - a slow, boring game for those who don't know the game within the game.

So why do we do this?

Commitment.  We have discussed commitment a LOT in this Blog recently because many people misunderstand the role it plays in successful selling.  Read any of these articles for more on commitment.

So let me help.  We are committed to doing whatever it takes to give our son whatever he needs in order to thrive.  With his talent in this sport, baseball is one of the opportunities we provide him with and doing whatever it takes to watch him play is one of the unconditional commitments we make.  Speaking of baseball, check out these new visual statistics being provided by MLB.  Does it get you thinking about the additional things you could measure in sales?  How about the additional things that we can measure?

In sales, most salespeople, especially the bottom 74%, don't do whatever it takes to succeed.  For example, if the company, quota, expectations and goals were your child, and you had similar values for your son or daughter, would you:

• Postpone filling your pipeline?
• Give up when you finally get a decision-maker on the phone because the prospect is too difficult to convert?
• Not advocate for yourself when faced with tough competition, a tougher prospect, or objections?
• Not thoroughly qualify an opportunity the way you would qualify the friends your son or daughter hangs out with or a trip they might take?
• Not challenge a prospect when their thinking or strategy isn't quite what it could or should be?
• Not talk about money because it's uncomfortable?
• Not point out, defend and brag about the value the way you would brag about your children?
• Not do whatever it takes to get a closable opportunity closed?

But that is exactly what the majority of salespeople are doing.  They half-sell.  They aren't thorough, or effective, or efficient, or memorable, or resilient, or tenacious, or assertive, because they aren't comfortable doing those things.  Because they don't equate those things as being the business equivalent of their own children, for whom they would do whatever it takes.  Especially if it's uncomfortable.  Whatever it takes. That's what commitment is.  It's not work ethic-silly.   Anyone can put in long hours.  It's about doing all of the necessary things despite being uncomfortable.  Whatever it takes.  I found the trademarked image at the top of this article from Jansen Sports Leadership Center.

Jonathan Farrington interviewed me for the cover feature in this week's edition of Top Sales Magazine.   The topic is the importance of getting sales selection right.

Coincidentally, the latest edition of Top Sales Academy is also out this week with me presenting, How  to Coach Salespeople Like a Pro and it's free, available on demand, and really useful.  Are you a committed sales leader or sales manager?   One of the things you must do is get better at coaching.  So what are you waiting for?