The Type of Salespeople Who Drive Me Crazy

Today’s post is by Dave Kurlan – a 2012 inductee into the Sales & Marketing Hall of Fame, a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, and sales development expert. He is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group (named the Top Sales Assessment Tool for seven consecutive years) and Kurlan & Associates (a global sales consulting firm). He has written two books, including the bestseller Baseline Selling, and his blog, Understanding the Sales Force, was named the Top Sales & Marketing Blog for six consecutive years.

 

A lot of things drive me crazy.

For instance, I can’t stand it when I choose the express lane for 10 items or less and that lane always has the s-l-o-w-e-s-t cashier.

I can’t stand it when I unsubscribe to junk email but the unsubscribe doesn’t take and the junk keeps coming in.

I can’t stand it when drivers cut in front of me and then drive too slowly.

I can’t stand it when I receive awful emails from marketers selling things I don’t need, who continue to send follow-up emails every few days.

And then there are the lousy salespeople. The weakest salespeople are so bad it’s a stretch to call them “salespeople” – although that is the role they are in and they are responsible for generating revenue.

I often write about the sales core competencies in which the best salespeople excel. Now let’s look at the sales core competencies in which the weakest salespeople are the worst.

Compare the percentage of salespeople who are strong in each competency for both the top 10 percent and the bottom 10 percent in all 21 sales core competencies.

Category	Competency	% Strong Top 10%	% Strong Bottom 10%
Will to Sell	Commitment	91	63
Will to Sell	Desire	97	20
Will to Sell	Outlook	81	50
Will to Sell	Motivation	100	59
Will to Sell	Responsibility	66	34
Sales DNA	Doesn’t Need to Be Liked	76	9
Sales DNA	Controls Emotions	63	10
Sales DNA	Supportive Buy Cycle	61	4
Sales DNA	Comfortable Discussing Money	87	4
Sales DNA	Supportive Beliefs	52	0
Sales DNA	Rejection Proof	97	55
Tactical	Hunter	96	18
Tactical	Consultative Seller	55	0
Tactical	Value Seller	93	1
Tactical	Qualifier	85	1
Tactical	Presentation Approach	92	31
Tactical	Relationship Builder	63	36
Tactical	Closer	20	0
Tactical	Sales Process	80	7
Tactical	CRM Savvy	81	13
Tactical	Mastery of Social Selling	41	4

It doesn’t take much math to determine that the score of the top 10 percent is 375 percent higher than the score of the bottom 10 percent.

The five biggest gaps are in the competencies:

1. Value Seller, with a gap of 92 points
2. Qualifier, with a gap of 84 points
3. Comfortable Discussing Money, with a gap of 83 points
4. Hunter Competency, with a gap of 78 points
5. Desire for Success in Sales, with a gap of 77 points

The weakest salespeople lack the Desire to succeed and, as a result, fail to fill their pipelines. The few opportunities that do get into their pipelines fail to close because these salespeople are unable to talk about money, can’t sell value, and don’t qualify.

We can also see that, in addition to the competencies with the five biggest gaps, NONE of the weakest salespeople have the following three competencies as strengths:

• Closer
• Consultative Seller
• Supportive Beliefs

And there are three more competencies where less than 10 percent of these weak salespeople have the competencies as strengths:

• Sales Process
• Closer
• Social Selling

Did you notice the one competency that sticks out like a sore thumb? Only 20 percent of the STRONG salespeople have the Closer Competency as a strength. Are you wondering why? They are so good at Hunting, Selling Consultatively, Selling Value, and Qualifying that they don’t need to be any good at Closing. For these top salespeople, closing is simply a natural conclusion of their sales process.

Those are the types of salespeople who don’t drive me (or their buyers) crazy.