Bridging the sales performance gap
3rd September 2016 | Bob Apollo
Bob Apollo on Building Scalable Businesses
In the majority of sales organisations, a high percentage of sales revenue is generated by the same minority of top sales performers, quarter after quarter. According to research published by the CEB in The Challenger Sale, this performance gap between top salespeople and the rest is amplified in complex, high-value sales environments.
They found that, in a transactional selling environment, the performance gap between average and star performers was 59 percent, but in complex sales environments the gap was almost 200 percent – more than three times as wide. It’s clear that even a modest narrowing of this gap could drive a dramatic improvement in revenue.
Ineffective strategies
The natural response from many sales leaders faced with this situation is to resolve to hire smarter next time, or to invest in sales training, but neither strategy seems to have a particularly good track record. When it comes to recruitment, it seems that there simply aren’t enough natural high-performers to go around.
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