{"id":705,"date":"2007-02-28T18:54:21","date_gmt":"2007-03-01T00:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/02\/mythical-top-performers\/"},"modified":"2007-02-28T18:55:10","modified_gmt":"2007-03-01T00:55:10","slug":"mythical-top-performers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/2007\/02\/mythical-top-performers\/","title":{"rendered":"Mythical Top Performers"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Dave Kurlan’s Myths About Top Performing Salespeople<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n
Most companies have “them”. Most managers brag about “them”. Most of “them” toot their own horns. Most are their company’s role models. Most companies would love to have more like “them”. They masquerade as the top salespeople in their companies, a claim supported by data, spreadsheets, commission statements, awards and accolades. But who are they really?<\/p>\n
Most of them are sales frauds. Most of them have everyone fooled. Most of them, if you took their cushy, big accounts away and asked them to go out and find some new business would fail. Most of them aren’t very strong salespeople. Most of them don’t possess a mountain of selling skills. Most of them just aren’t what everyone thinks they are. Most of them have inherited their customers, have the biggest territories, have the best accounts or have been out there for decades.<\/strong><\/p>\n
When we evaluate sales organizations, we are always able to identify these sales frauds. But what does it mean for the company, for the sales frauds, for the sales organization, once they are exposed?<\/p>\n
History tells us that most of these sales frauds are actually great account managers who should continue managing those great accounts.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
He’s right. We’ve seen this first hand in some of our accounts. The supposed top salesperson, once assessed, was revealed to be a salesperson of limited sales skills. I remember in one account we assessed the top salesperson and he came back rather weak. He owned the number 1 account in the company and was placed on a pedestal by the ownership. The truth came out after talking to one of the people who worked with him. This “top” salesperson inherited the large account (before it was large) from a retiring salesperson when he first began with the company years ago. He did grow the account and deserves the recognition for that important activity.<\/p>\n
But we had to explain to our customer that he was not the model salesperson for the hunter position we were hired to select. There were many discussions regarding this topic and eventually we established our point.<\/p>\n
A key point to remember regarding salespeople is that they may have been the right hire at the time you hired them. However, that does not mean that same person would be the right hire for today. Markets change, position requirements evolve, sales tools expand and so forth. These factors are the basis for not<\/em> benchmarking your existing salespeople when hiring a new salesperson.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
From Dave Kurlan’s Myths About Top Performing Salespeople: Most companies have “them”. Most managers brag about “them”. Most of “them” toot their own horns. Most are their company’s role models. Most companies would love to have more like “them”. They masquerade as the top salespeople in their companies, a claim supported by data, spreadsheets, commission statements, awards and accolades. But who are they really? Most of them are sales frauds. Most of them have everyone fooled. Most of them, if you took their cushy, big accounts away and asked them to go out and find some new business would fail. Most of them aren’t very strong salespeople. Most of them don’t possess… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16,15],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5Oho-bn","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=705"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/705\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=705"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=705"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/selectmetrix.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=705"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}