For those of us in the B2B marketing world, understanding what drives sales rep effectiveness can help define the role we play in supporting our sales team. In a recent quantitative effort by the Sales Executive Council (SEC), rep characteristics—having to do with Attitudes, Skills/Behaviors, Activities and Knowledge—were studied. They found that certain attributes tended to clump together into a few profiles. More specifically, five distinct groups of sales reps were found, each containing a very different combination of attributes. See if you can guess the clear winner and the clear loser as I summarize them here:
- The Challenger (27% of the sample) – These reps are the debaters on the team. They have a deep understanding of the customer’s business, and based on that insight, the Challenger rep is not afraid to assert his/her views…even if those views differ from the customer.
- The Relationship Builder (21% of the sample) – Sales reps that fall into this category have a tremendous service mentality. They are adept at building and nurturing customer relationships by being highly accessible to the customer and responsive to needs.
- The Hard Worker (21% of the sample) – These are the folks that are always willing to go the extra mile. These sales reps are self-motivated, nose to the grindstone, and don’t give up easily. They run to feedback and seek out opportunities for improvement.
- The Lone Wolf (18% of the sample) – These reps are self-confident – they follow their own instincts instead of the rules. We love them because they bring in the number – we hate them because they’re both hard to manage as well as hard to find. These reps are probably best described as the prima donnas of your sales force.
- The Problem Solver (14% of the sample) – Detail-oriented reps that are reliable and naturally drawn to solving client issues (particularly the kinds of post-sales service issues that can really bog down a client relationship).
Who Wins? By far, the profile most associated with high performance is the Challenger profile. Again, these are the reps that love to debate and use his/her deep understanding of a customer’s business to provide that customer with a different way of thinking about their business and how to compete. In fact, when you dig into the data, they do three things well:
- Teach – Providing insight in the moment and teaching customers something new/valuable about how to compete in their market
- Tailor – Crafting the message being delivered to resonate with the customer’s specific priorities
- Assert Control – This does not mean be aggressive or abusive; this is about the ability and willingness of a sales rep to stand their ground when the customer begins to push back.
Who Doesn’t? Less than 10% of all-star performers fall into the Relationship Builder profile. To be clear, the data doesn’t suggest that we shouldn’t have relationships with customers, but it tells us that building familiarity with your customers shouldn’t be your primary strategy for growing revenue.
Up next: we’ll look more specifically at the ramifications of all this for marketers.
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on 25 February 10
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After reading your article, I suppose I am a bit taken back. I do see what your getting at, but relationships are the key to ultimate success. I disagree that reps or sales persons are types, I have made a great career for myself by being both challenger,relationship builder and friend, but in no way do I think that a sales professional is a one dimensional, single type. I know personally that I can pick up the phone and contact many customers/friends and produce a sale. There is a level of trust, respect and interpersonal connections that your types just don’t cover. I disagree with your statements, but wish you well.
on 25 February 10
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Interesting point Joseph, and you’re right, at the end of the day, sales reps are, to some degree, a blend of all of these profiles.
This work was specifically designed to help senior sales executives prioritize investments in skill development broadly across the sales force assuming a finite amount of training dollars. In other words, what skill set improvement investments will give us the biggest bang for our buck.
Our guidance to members is to think about these profiles like potential college majors – yes, everyone takes the core curriculum (science, math, etc), but everyone specializes as well. These five profiles represent the different sales rep “majors” that exist.
Now, as we dig into these profiles, the relationship builders that we found are, in a sense, a “one trick pony” – squarely focused on building strong personal relationships across the customer organization, being likeable and generous with their time. This is very much a service mentality.
Regarding the challengers, the SEC’s work does not suggest that these reps don’t build strong relationships. In fact, the high-performer challengers found in the sample were above average on all of the “relationship building” attributes. They just don’t hang their hat on those attributes like a relationship builder would…put another way, its not their major.
Instead, the challenger rep uses those relationships as a starting point to achieve a specific end. This rep wins by creating and maintaining a certain amount of constructive tension across the sale. They offer the customer unique perspectives – and communicate those perspectives with passion and precision in a way that draws the customer into a conversation.
It’s customer value (challenger approach) versus customer convenience (relationship builder).
on 25 February 10
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Sorry Joseph but I disagree, the psychology categorizes all types of people in groups, and independent of who created the classification the categories have the same statements or similar behaviors. So I believe that sales reps and all professionals’ categories are playing with their characters and temperament creating similar personalities, as you and me. All the best.
on 4 March 10
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I found this article and the follow up article really helpful and completely agree with the profiles and ‘college major’ philosophy. I don’ t care how much training you give some people, they are innately a ‘relationship builder’ or ‘challenger’ and you can’t change that DNA. I do agree with the other comments that you have to build relationships, etc to be successful but most leading personnel management phillosophies start with the premise that we are all hard wired for certain behaviors.
This type of philosophy is similar to cusotmer segmentation. As marketers,we use demographics and behavioral attitudes and ethnographics to drive our marketing. Why wouldn’t we do the same to allocate training and recruiting dollars to the right mix of employees.
I for one will be looking at our staff to make sure we aren’t over-indexed in certain areas. thanks for the article!