Analogies
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The Difference Between Sales Competencies, Sales Capabilities and Sales Outcomes
- February 14, 2023
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Sales Data and Science, Understanding the Sales Force
If you watched Super Bowl 57, you observed two teams that simply refused to give up or give in. Sometimes, that’s the feeling I get when I’m writing articles and I have solid data on my side, while dozens of competing authors just won’t stop their constant barrage of articles using junk science, anecdotal evidence, and alternate facts.
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The Connection Between Road Signs, Sales Data, Consultative Selling and Sales Recruiting
- December 6, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
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:
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5 Reasons Sales Teams Underperform Like My Old Wiper Blades
- November 17, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
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:
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Can a New Sales Manager Be a Difference Maker?
- November 9, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
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?
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New Data: Is Sales Compensation Aligned With Changing Motivational Needs?
- October 31, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
When interviewing sales and sales leadership candidates, similar counter-intuitive discussions occur. Many candidates claim that money isn’t that important because they love sales – until they claim that the base salary isn’t high enough. For others, even though they may not disclose it, the base salary is completely irrelevant as long as the company won’t cap the salesperson’s total earnings. We need to decode the topic of compensation so that we can be sure that both the base salary and the total on-plan earnings are acceptable to candidates.
It is very important to make sense of the hidden and unpredictable compensation responses because many salespeople leave the company after a short time because they don’t believe earnings are equivalent to the compensation that was promised.
It is crucial to understand that salespeople are motivated primarily by one of two motivational styles and unless you wish to hire only one type of salesperson, there must be two compensation plans that should be tailored accordingly. Let’s discuss this.
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The Irony of Free Passes for Under Performing Salespeople
- October 21, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
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!
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How to Hire the Right Salespeople Using This Jeep vs. Infiniti Analogy
- October 7, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
Usually, the overall score, relative strength of a candidate’s capabilities, and recommendation are more important than any specific scores. Usually. But with the assessment of Mary, it was an entirely different story.
Let’s review the scores and findings from Mary’s OMG Sales Candidate Assessment. She had really good scores. Really good. Her Sales Percentile was 82 so she was stronger than 82% of the salespeople in the world. So was OMG wrong? Why did the company hire her? Why did she fail?
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How Your Sales Team Can Double its Win Rate in a Recession
- September 26, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
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.
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Is 28 Years Long Enough for a Sales Assessment Trial ?
- September 19, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Sales Assessments Compared, Understanding the Sales Force
Isn’t 28 years long enough for us to prove ourselves?
Clearly OMG is not for everyone. Companies that sell at the lowest price, companies that are the brand leaders, and companies that have a transactional sale don’t need to hire good salespeople because their salespeople are order-takers. But what about everyone else?
After consistently proving its legendary predictive accuracy making it a no-brainer to use OMG, there are five possible reasons why companies didn’t use OMG to assess their sales candidates over the past 28 years:
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10 Sales Attributes That Don’t Differentiate Top Salespeople from Bottom Salespeople
- September 12, 2022
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Categories: Analogies, Understanding the Sales Force
I’ve written several articles (same as always) about OMG (Objective Management Group) Tailored Fits/Proofs of Concept where I analyze the differences between a company’s top producers and bottom producers to identify the findings/scores that differentiate their tops from their bottoms. That is the science of sales performance and sales selection and the last time I wrote about it was in this article from February of 2022. For comparison, the most recent example of a blowhard writing junk science without being scientific about what top salespeople do differently can be found in this article from August of 2022.
Today’s article (new article) will go in the opposite direction and discuss strengths and skills that don’t differentiate tops from bottoms.
