- April 24, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Brad Bolino provided a link to an Inc Magazine article about the Peter Principle. For their example, the author used salespeople who were promoted to sales managers based on their sales performance, but not because they had any specific skills or capabilities to be effective sales managers. Their sales management performance was poor.
This correlates very well to Objective Management Group’s (OMG) data on sales management effectiveness. I have previously written about the sorry state of sales management. Some of the data I have shared includes:
- only 18% of sales managers should actually be in the role
- only 7% of sales managers are both consistent and effective at coaching salespeople
- fewer than 10% of sales managers spend 50% of their time coaching salespeople
It’s not a pretty picture. The data shows that the best sales managers have salespeople who:
- are more likely to be a top performer
- are more likely to be among the top 20% of all salespeople
- are more likely to be replaced if they aren’t performing
- are more likely to not voluntarily leave the company
Why are so many good salespeople promoted to sales managers despite lacking the skills to perform effectively in their new role?
Salespeople are just like everyone else in the sense that they welcome promotions. And Sales Leaders and CEOs will most always take the easier path and promote from within. After all, it’s easier (for them) to find a replacement salesperson than a replacement sales manager.
Everyone is to blame and people are fickle.
I see it every day and not just with our clients. I get a daily report of new subscribes and unsubscribes to this Blog. On a normal day, the subscribes dwarf the unsubscribes but if I so much as type any of the following four words in my articles the unsubscribes dwarf the subscribes:
- God
- Jesus
- Trump
- FoxNews
It’s hysterical! Regular readers know that I don’t write ABOUT those topics! I make analogies to sales USING those topics.
For example, the most recent articles where I used one of those topics as an analogy are:
- I mentioned God in, “Was the Easter Sermon about Salespeople?”
- I mentioned Jesus in, “Homicide Detective Makes Best Case for Sales Process”
- I mentioned Jesus in, “12 Powerful Sales Lessons from The Chosen”
- I mentioned Trump in, “Trump, the Iowa Caucus and Sales Improvement”
- I mentioned FoxNews in, “Fox News and CNN Can Help You Provide Better Sales Opportunity Reviews”
I mentioned them again so I probably lost more subscribers but they weren’t part of my audience, they were simply people who “subscribed” but didn’t really engage.
People are fickle.
The important lesson is that it doesn’t matter!
There are people who don’t want to talk to you, who don’t want to meet with you, and who don’t want to buy from you. Why should that bother you? Most salespeople have win rates that are lower than 20% with some being as low as 10%. How much better would your win rate be if you stopped trying to sell to people who were never going to buy from you?
People are fickle.
That’s where a sales scorecard comes in. A properly constructed sales scorecard objectively scores an opportunity and accurately predicts whether or not you will win the business. Not to be confused with a marketing scorecard which scores a lead based on how closely it comes to your target customer, a sales scorecard assigns weighted points based on whether the buying conditions are consistent with those that typically result in a win. Are buying conditions different from qualified opportunities?
Yes, because people are fickle.
While less than 20% of qualified opportunities become wins, more than 80% of opportunities that get a favorable score from the scorecard are won!
If you want to learn more about sales scorecards and whether they can help you significantly improve your win rate, feel free to reach out to me via email.
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