There’s an interesting paper published by the Harvard Business Review based on a study of 800 sales professionals in live sales meetings. The authors of the study discovered eight types of sales people, only three of which were consistently effective. These three ‘types’–Experts, Closers and Consultants– made up only 37% of salespeople, and the other 63% of salespeople “actually drove down performance.”

They present some staggering figures:

• Only 9.1% of sales meetings result in a sale
• Only 1 out of 250 salespeople exceed their targets
• $1760 of profit per sale is needed just to cover the cost of failed sales meetings (assuming that the average meeting cost $160).

It’s interesting to see the notes on the five types of salespeople that hurt performance, and the authors’ suggestions on how these people could improve their sales performance.

It’s clear that the Storyteller, Focuser and Narrator types need help in understanding the fundamental skills of Probing.

Storytellers: Need to focus meetings…, to ‘read’ meetings, and to become more aware of their behavior.

Focusers: Need training in listening skills and must learn to use their technical savvy to meet customers’ needs.

Narrators: Need basic instruction in questioning techniques… Should shift their focus… to customers themselves.

The last two unsuccessful salespeople types, Aggressors and Socializers suffer from an imbalance of Relationship versus Opportunity focus. Aggressors would seem to have a higher Opportunity focus but poor Relationship focus as they “approach sales meetings purely as price negotiations.. however some customers dislike their combative approach.” The Socializers are highly Relationship-focused but have too little Opportunity focus, “[they] may initially impress customers with their friendly chat… [b]ut they usually don’t get past this, and close few deals.”