One of the more frequent discussions we have at our Board meetings is about hiring the right sales people, keeping sales people, and getting sales people to perform. To different organizations sales people mean different things. Do they have to be hunters or farmers? Do the sales people have to be more technical or business oriented? The questions are endless.
Joe Zente, my esteemed Alternative Board Colleague and CEO of Z3 Performance Development (www.zthree.com ) provided the following statistics.
- < 10% of salespeople are capable of providing ROI (businessnet.com)
- The average sales turnover is approximately 53%
- 24% will not prospect—AT ALL
- From behavior assessments 8% can be considered hunters, 1% have full hunter skill set
- From behavior and value assessments 45% will not close
- From behavior and value assessments, the typical sales applicant has less than 23% of closing attributes
These are scary statistics. Is there anything you can do about it? If you are like me, you have a library of sales books on everything you can do to improve on these numbers, and raise the bar for salespeople and sales management. Self-Analysis is great, but we all need a look from outside in to get a clearer perspective. No one person has the answers. Despite this information behavior assessments may only give 30% of the answer. An outside advisor, coach, or an advisory board can be of tremendous help. If you are interested in hearing more, please do not hesitate to contact me.
