A must-read study on the Effectiveness (or rather Ineffectiveness) of Selling

“While many signs point to economic recovery,
underlying performance challenges persist for the
sales teams at many large enterprises where more
than cosmetic fixes may be needed to capture
greater revenue from current customers, penetrate
new and emerging markets and maintain profit
margins. Composing a high performance sales
function, even in an upturn, may require a deeper
transformation of the fundamentals—from strategy
and process to systems and talent—to bring the
science and art of sales back into focus.”

SALES PERFORMANCE

I recently came across this Accenture Study on Optimizing Sales Effectiveness to Achieve High Performance Selling. Reading these real world statistics brought to reality the magnitude of the problems and inefficiencies that most sales leaders and managers have to deal with. It really got me excited, as helping to eliminate these problems is why I come to work each day.  I want to share 3 especially intriguing statistics that statistics here.

“Our research shows that the top 20 percent of salespeople bring in more than 60 percent of the revenue for their firm. The challenge is to capture what differentiates high-performing salespeople, and then use that profile in hiring, training and retention.”

As shocking as that statistic is, you have to keep in mind that it’s based on large established companies. In younger, less mature companies those figures can be skewed even more. Top 20% percent of the reps can be responsible for more than 80% of revenue. To help put that in perspective, let’s say you have a team of 10 sales reps. 6 to 8 of them bring very little to the table. They are either on their way in, on their way out or just barely staying afloat. To make matters worse, what happens to your numbers if one or two of those top reps decide to leave? Unless you have a way to figure out exactly what they did to be so effective and have a scalable way to quickly train others, you are out of luck. Possibly out of work.

“Across all large organizations, an average of 53.3 percent of sales representatives met or exceeded their sales quota”

Almost half the sales reps are not even hitting their minimum. What are they all doing? Who are they meeting with? What are they saying at those meetings? You need to have a non-intrusive way to gain insight into what’s actually going on. This way you can either provide them with additional training they need or confirm that they just don’t belong selling for your organization.

“Once a part of the workforce new hires can take significant time to ramp up. The vast majority (71 percent) of large enterprises felt it took sales representatives at least six months to gain the skills they need when newly hired. In fact, 23 percent said it takes more than a year for a new rep to be fully-ramped up and effective.”

Selling is hard. It’s still a fuzzy art. A sink or swim profession. Good sales people are hard to come by and the biggest reason why is a lack of scalable ways to train them to not just be okay, but to be top producers. The great reps are so good that they do things automatically. Historically they had a very hard time turning what they do into a repeatable process that can be taught to others.

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The problems above are echoed across all organizations. They are the biggest frustrations we all deal with as sales executives, and exactly what we at SalesCrunch help companies address. For the first time ever we are able to provide you with insight into what your top reps are doing, as well as a platform that helps scale those best practices to the rest of your team.

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Topics: sales management, sales process, sales training