living performanceSales signals... Salespeople spent 2009 on the frontlines of a battle for business. In Autumn, Krauthammer, with the Groupe ESC Clermont Graduate School of Management, asked them –in depth - about their experiences. In 2010, we will publish the results - four reports into ‘the state of sales’. In the first, ( April 2010), we asked salespeople to tell us how confident they felt about their ability to do their jobs and reach their targets. We checked the business pressure they felt, and their commitment to their organisations. Now, in this second report, we ask: what behaviour do salespeople believe is necessary to move from the quick win to sustainable performance? To what extent do their views diverge from what thousands of observations have led us to conclude are ‘exemplary? And crucially, what standards do their managers encourage? How high can I fly?Overall, 6 out of 10 salespeople understand what exemplarity isIn this report we discover that salespeople have a fair grasp, overall, of what exemplary behaviour is. Overall, around 64% truly support our propositions (based on 30 years of identifyng and modelling sales excellence). The biggest knowledge gaps – where people do not even ‘get’ what exemplarity is - are in the process domains of prospecting, (where people also feel the least competent) and diagnosing. People’s understanding of good practice in negotiating and closing is far higher, however. Can you help me get there? Overall, only 5 out of 10 managers generally encourage exemplarityIf, overall, 64% of salespeople understand what exemplarity is, strikingly fewer (48%) managers are reported to generally encourage it. The poorest support is to be found in the area of prospecting (again), negotiating scores highest by a slim margin Between what salespeople believe they should do and what they say their managers encourage them to do, where are the biggest gaps?
