Executive Summary

of
World Class Sales Force
Best Practices

Analysis & Report by:

Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group

December 16, 2005

©2005 Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group 1

World Class Sales Force Best Practices

Table of Contents

Summary Overview .....................................................................Page 2

Understanding the Research.......................................................Page 4

Selling Best Practices ..................................................................Page 5

A Process for Improving Sales Performance...............................Page 8

References ................................................................................Page 10

2 ©2005 Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group

Summary Overview
As many corporate fiscal years end, top sales executives begin to analyze their sales teams to
figure out how to do better in the up coming year. Many begin to try to better understand their top
their top performers and identify why they are successful. Identifying top performer best practices
in a sales force is not a revolutionary idea. Every day, sales managers in top companies around
the world spend much of their time trying to understand what makes the top performers so great.
Anecdotal observations never seem to yield useful insights, yet so many senior managers
desperately search for commonalities among their best sales people. The reason so many
managers are not able to identify their own top performers’ ‘secrets’ is that they tend to look in the
wrong place. For some reason, people always look first at a top performer’s personal
characteristics, such as personality or attitude. In the past, when products where in fact unique
enough to sell themselves, this wasn’t a bad practice. But selling has become more complex. Just
look into your own market. The number of things that determine the success of a top performer
has grown into an interrelated system of diverse components. Those who were successful 10
years ago may not be your top performers today because of the changes in the customer’s buying
process and because of competition.

The research compiled for this report was exhaustive. The literature on so-called best practices of
selling is legion. This is likely so for three simple reasons. Firstly, there’s a ready market for the
data. Earnest sales and learning executives eagerly seek the magic pill or the silver bullet to put
their team over the top. Secondly, there is a supply glut of self-described selling experts who
proffer their version of these magic pills and silver bullets. Lots of people have something to say
about how to sell, either because they have at one time sold or because they know there is a
decent buck to be made in the trade. Thirdly, the removal of barriers to entry through the Internet
means that anyone who wants to publish their opinions, to put in digital ink their silver bullet, is able
to put something “out there.” The challenge for sales executives is culling through the information
available to separate the wheat from the chaff. And there is a lot of chaff to mislead the seeking
sales or training executive.

A couple of points ought to be made, not just for the sake of clarity and accuracy, but also for
establishing ground rules in moving forward. To begin with, it should be noted that not every
practice that purports to be a “best” one is, in actuality, a best one. It might not even be a good
one. For that matter, it may not even in reality be a practice that occurs with any degree of
regularity.

This suggests our first challenge into those who conduct their own best practices or competency
analysis. Often, the studies involve surveys of either their sales forces or their sales leaders.
Surveys which ask someone what he does to succeed leads to one insuperable problem: people
are frequently wrong and they sometimes lie. This is what might be called the “Bear Bryant
phenomenon” after the famous football coach at the University of Alabama.

The great human performance researcher Thomas Gilbert, who was a professor at the University
when the Bear paced the sidelines, wanted to unlock the secrets of the Bear’s success. As a

©2005 Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group 3

colleague, he had many occasions to interview Bryant about his coaching methodology, but he
also was able to observe the great coach in action. What he found is that the Bear’s statements
about his coaching behaviors did not always align with the behaviors themselves. And thus it is
with surveys about sales best practices. How can you be sure that what someone says he does is
actually what he does?

Another problem lies in an over reliance on top performers to unlock best practices. The amount of
paper used to print the literature written by guys who consistently broke sales records is enough to
reforest the planet. The problem with trying to learn from the expert – apart from the expert’s being
mostly unaware of what truly made him successful – is that the expert may have habits and
practices that are inimitable. For instance, consider a great pitcher in baseball who may have an
unusual hitch in his delivery (the great Red Sox Luis Tiant comes to mind). Or consider the golf
swing of Tiger Woods, with his smooth back swing and his powerful follow through and outstanding
body turn. What might have worked for them would only frustrate others if they tried. I learned this
lesson from observing one of my own mentors in selling, who constantly preached the importance
of using questions, but who himself seldom asked one in his engagement with a client. Moreover,
as one of the reports reviewed states,
“Few star sellers will accurately explain the specific things they do differently from others…
because they want to protect their elite status. For many sales executives, the difference
often boils down to intangibles like “passion” or “drive.” While such innate characteristics
are important, they do not provide any raw material for an effective performance
management program that can be applied to all reps.”1
The unique and often inimitable behaviors of the gods often do not translate very well into “best
practices” for mere mortals. And if it cannot – or should not – be taught to others, what’s the point
in learning it, other than as a forensic exercise for academics?

Even if you can accurately know what top-performing sales forces do, even if you can eliminate
those practices which are one-off habits or inimitable habits of the singular experts, even if you
ensure that your information has current relevance, how do you know you have a practice which
correlates with success? Because when all is said and done, you may end up with a list of
practices that are not only not “best,” they may not even be very good. In the end, it comes down
to success correlation.

In our opinion, a best practice is a technique or methodology that, through experience and
research, has proven to reliably lead to a desired result in a specific environment. A specific best
practice for a distribution organization does not necessarily mean the practice will succeed in a
medical device organization. A commitment to using the best practices in any field is a
commitment to using all the knowledge and technology at one's disposal to ensure success. This
study will present those sales best practices which are:

1. Observable (it is something they actually do as opposed to something they say they do)
2. Measurable (it’s a behavior not an attitude)
3. Repeatable (it’s not the one-off competency of the genius)
4. Closely correlated with success (if performed with regularity, it leads to victory more often
than not)

4 ©2005 Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group

One final difficulty is worth mentioning. Unlike manufacturing or engineering, which both involve
discreet tasks of a finite nature that are easily observed, measured, and reproduced, selling is a
complex interactive activity which involves multiple parties and a potentially infinite number of
variables, all of which impact on outcomes. Everything from the seller’s behavior to market forces
can influence or directly impact whether or not one has success. Trying to isolate the few key
things that correlate with success or failure – that is, trying to identify best practices which are
observable, measurable, and repeatable – is fraught with peril. It is always risky to articulate with
certitude whether one thing or another led to success. Trying can lead to absurd theories about
what contributed to success, which in part helps to explain the number of ridiculous books or
training programs bouncing around the marketplace offering to teach you the real secrets to
success. Should you always sell to VITO? What about the ABCs (always be closing)? Is it “open
questions” or “closed questions” which work?

If you attempt to understand the best practices of selling with the hopes of incorporating them
within your organization, it’s crucial, then, to carry an open-eyed awareness of these sensible
caveats. Approaching the task with trepidation and knowing “it ain’t necessarily so” should stand
you in good stead and avoid the most dangerous pitfalls.

Understanding the Research

The first thing to note about researching this topic is that there is a literal glut of information
available. A simple Google or Yahoo! search (using the keywords “best practices” and “sales” or
“selling) yields more than 400,000 hits. Amazon.com sells thousands of titles that have to do with
selling and best practices. It seems everyone who’s ever sold something successfully has
something to say to others about how to do it.

Generally speaking, most of the literature available should not be construed as best practices,
even though it might claim to be. In fact, only a tiny fraction of what’s published, whether as books,
magazine articles, white papers, or web pages would qualify as best practices research. The vast
majority of the works consist of a self-proclaimed expert explaining how to succeed in selling,
whether individually or organizationally. The most meaningful research we identified for this
analysis comes from your partners at the Sales Executive Council and from HR Chally’s study into
world-class sales forces.

When the thousands of pieces are culled to separate best practices grain from self-promoting
chaff, there emerges two classes – or categories – of research. The class with the preponderance
of research focuses on those studies dealing with organizational best practices, perhaps because
it’s a simpler study and easier to reach statistical significance. The other class, with substantially
fewer examples, relates to those things top-performing individuals do to become or remain top-
performing. Occasionally, there is convergence between the two, as in what the organization does
to influence the individual performer. For instance, becoming a customer-driven organization
presupposes not only organizational commitment to put customers first, but also a commitment to
implementing that priority at the field level by ensuring skills and processes that are customer-
centric.

©2005 Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group 5

Selling Best Practices
Selling is a complex discipline which involves many kinds of activities, whether they are external,
customer-facing activities (e.g., making a presentation) or internal, company-centric activities (e.g.,
researching the customer). There are, in that complex array of activities, probably innumerable
qualities that make someone a top performer. Some are obvious and might qualify as simply the
minimum standard (what some wags call the “ticket to the dance”). For instance, being on time is a
minimum requirement. So is good time management (interestingly, the research demonstrates that
time management skills may not be a requirement for top performance, but that is perhaps beyond
the scope of this paper). Other skills which seem to be required are basic interactive skills (i.e.,
verbal communication). Then there are what might be called “soft skills,” or those things which can
be described as innate to the seller. For instance, a strong work ethic and high energy level may
be essential to success, but they are difficult to teach across the sales force (see above for the
criteria of “best practice”). Some of these sorts of skills might work as hiring criteria, but they do
not fit our definition of best practices.

What this analysis will focus on are those practices which can be observed and then repeated
across the sales force. So for instance, a positive cheerful attitude may indeed correlate with
success, but it is a bit difficult to teach it or replicate it across the sales force.

Best Practice #1: Understanding and developing customer needs

This is the ability of the sales person to be able to identify potential problem areas the customer
might be experiencing, either proactively through effective questions or responsively through what
the customer says without being provoked. Implied in this is the ability to ASK QUESTIONS which
cause the customer to think about problem areas and to then LISTEN to what the customer says
about these problem areas (active listening and empathic listening were both cited in the research
as key skills).

As a sub practice, the research reviewed also seemed to indicate that top performing sellers were
able to discriminate between general problems, and dissatisfactions and those needs which would
correlate with success (i.e., needs which the customer felt urgency to take action to resolve). Top
performers were able to use questions to DEVELOP general problems and effectively link those
problems to the business impact of the customer.

Best Practice #2: Develops trust in the client relationship

The research, either from the customers’ perspective or the sellers’, seems to be unanimous on the
importance of trust. And top performing sales people worked hard at building and maintaining trust
with their customers. Getting there is something of a litany of those things you would expect in this
category. Trusted sellers tell the truth; they are candid. One organization referred to their trusted
vendor as a group of truth blurters, even when it might have cost the vendor business. Trusted
sellers are responsive to complaints, problems, and expressed needs of the customer. They return
phone calls in a timely manner. They do what they say they are going to do when they say they
are going to do it. Moreover, they know what their organization and its products and services can
do. They do not try to do what they cannot do. They under-promise and over-deliver. They tell the

6 ©2005 Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group

truth. They are concerned about the customer. And they are experts at their organization’s
capabilities.

Best Practice #3: Know your customer

This goes beyond Best Practice #1. It is more than simply asking questions and listening to the
customer. What this relates to is the ability to understand the customer’s business. Top
performing sales people not only uncover and develop customer needs and then know what they
and their organization can do. The best practice is to penetrate deeper to understand the
customer’s business. Who are THEIR customers? What are the trends impacting their customers
market or industry? How do these trends impact the strategic direction of the customer? Who are
the key players in the customer’s organization? Who are the customers competitors and how do
they threaten the customer (this implies a sort of SWOT analysis on the customer)? Top
performers did not rely on asking their customer about these things, but rather invested the time to
research it themselves (praise be for the Internet).

As a sub-practice, the top performers leveraged this knowledge in two ways. First, the top
performers not only knew this information, they incorporated it in the strategic approach with the
customer. For instance, understanding the financial impact of a given procedure might have on the
customer’s ability to meet their mission, might help them frame their discussions around ways that
a new solution can give them competitive advantage. Secondly, top performers had a common
process to evaluate their own personal account strategy for the given account. This enabled them
know at any given time what they knew or didn’t know and had an easy way to communicate that
strategy with other in their organization.

Best Practice #4: Full knowledge of capabilities (i.e., products, services, technical support)
and customer applications (e.g., tailoring solutions to a customer’s particular application);
able to bring to bear internal or external resources in service to the customer

Top performing sellers are expert resource brokers. This has become almost a necessity (that is,
something that is the ticket to the dance, rather than a differentiator) as solving customer problems
becomes more and more complicated. The best know their capabilities and how they “fit”, or help
the customer drive better results. Top performers are also able to rely on the person or people who
know how to demonstrate that “fit”. Sometimes, they can draw on resources within their
organization. At other times, they partner with other vendors. (This also says something about an
institutional best practice: the best sales forces are not afraid to bring in partners when it serves the
customer’s interests.)

Best Practice #5: Managing competitive threat over the course of an opportunity pursuit

The top performers realized that they are in a long-cycle, relational sale. Having one good sales
call, while perhaps cause for some cheering, does not end the game. They know that success
comes from the long haul and involves not only stringing together successful interactions with the
customer, but also being aware of the interplay of competitors on the relationship. Top performers
have tools and methods for helping them and their organization understand the competitive
situation. Whether it is through SWOT analyses or value matrices or other means, they invest time

©2005 Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group 7

and energy understanding who their competition is and how to manage them. Further, they carry
this strategic knowledge to its tactical application when they are face-to-face with the customer.
Furthermore, because they know they are in a relational sale and that a successful outcome in one
call does not mean a “sale,” top performers are constantly looking to the next step. Their goal or
objective in each customer interaction is to move the sale forward, sometimes yard-by-yard and
sometimes inch-by-inch.

A Process for Improving Sales Performance

Over the last decade, an important shift has been occurring in sales. This shift can best be
characterized as a transition in customer expectations along a continuum, from a need for a quality
product at a competitive price to the expectation for a strategic impact on the customer’s business
and brand.

In market leading companies, this shift has driven a re-examination of what constitutes the required
skill set for a top-performing sales team. In the distant past, simply having a strong knowledge of
the product portfolio was sufficient. More recently, it was a matter of developing the ability to
match your solution to the customer’s needs. Today, those skill sets are still necessary, but hardly
sufficient. Today, it is also necessary to have a broad and deep, a comprehensive understanding
of the customer’s business and industry in order to be in the league of the world-class sales teams.
Because of that requirement, the knowledge and skill profile of a top performing sales rep in one of
today’s world-class sales teams has but a faint resemblance to his or her counterpart from
yesteryear.

The shifting nature of sales and the significant implications of that shift on the professional have
been both profound and pervasive. To the topic of this paper, one of the areas which has felt that
impact is sales training. If the skill demands for success have been significantly increased – and
they have – then the knock-on effect on sales training has been substantial. And as the top-
performing sales rep of today has little resemblance to his counterpart form yesterday; so the same
can be said about today’s a high-impact sales training curriculum.

An Exploration of Sales Training

Today’s sales reps are smarter, more knowledgeable, and better educated than ever before. And
that is necessary, since a requirement is for them to be an important part of your organization’s
competitive advantage.

As a corollary, sales training must more compelling, faster paced, and more substantive than the
best of yesterday’s work. The sales training that market-leading companies have put in place is
qualitatively different from what they invested in but a few years ago. Three of the cornerstones of
that difference are as follows:

Strategic Business Focus. In order to be effective, sales training cannot just be customized to
the client; it must be custom designed for the client. The fundamental design question is not one
related to selecting whether this skill or that skill should be the focus for the program; that is,
whether we emphasize strategy skills or call execution skills. Instead, the foundation for any
effective program is established by first identifying the fundamental business challenges that are

8 ©2005 Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group

preventing your sales team from driving revenue and market share. That’s what the program
needs to be about. And then one addresses what ever skill sets are required to drive that
objective. It is a simple matter of a ruthless focus on driving performance that makes a difference –
not training for training sake.

Best Practices. Research study after research study has revealed that organizations with world-
class sales teams are particularly good at leveraging institutional resources. They do this in a wide
variety of ways. One way germane for the design of sales training relates to sales best practices --
what are the top performing sales reps in your organization and in other leading companies doing
that really works?

One of the past sins of sales training has been the introduction of academic, overly complex
models as the suggested basis for improving sales effectiveness. A more direct approach, one
which maps the need to drive business results, focuses on what the top reps are doing on a good
day. Find out what the best are doing, and provide the others a structured opportunity to explore
and practice those skills and techniques that have an established track record in today’s market.

Innovative Designs. Best practices are about what is being learned. An additional consideration
is how the learning takes place. Most sales teams today are populated with sales reps that expect
fast-paced, engaging learning experiences – and nothing less is really acceptable. Tremendous
strides have taken place in the last five years in deploying learning designs that are more about
helping people to learn, rather than “teaching by PowerPoint.” These design techniques, along
with ideas around learning integrated skill sets, high involvement of sales management in the
learning, and real-time updating, are some of the key characteristic of state-of-the-art sales training
offerings.

©2005 Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group 9

References

Published Works
Gilbert, Thomas F. and Marilyn B. Gilbert, “The Science of Winning”, Training Magazine, August
1988.

Rackham, Neil, Richard Ruff, and Larry Friedman, Getting Partnering Right: How Marker Leaders
are Creating Long-Term Competitive Advantage, ©1996 McGraw-Hill.

Rackham, Neil and John DeVincentis, Rethinking the Sales Force: Redefining Selling to Create
and Capture Customer Value, ©1999 McGraw-Hill.

Treacy, Michael and Fred Wiersema, The Discipline of Market Leaders: Choose Your Customers,
Narrow Your Focus, Dominate Your Market, ©1995 Addison Wesley.

Corcoran, Kevin J. et al, High Performance Sales Organizations: Creating Competitive Advantage,
©1995 Irwin Professional Publishing

Maister, David H., Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford, The Trusted Advisor, ©2000 the Free
Press

Pine, Joseph II and James H. Gilmore, The Experience Economy, ©1999 Harvard Business School
Press

“The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management”, University of Missouri, Kenneth R.
Evans, general editor

Weitzul, James B., Personality Traits in Professional Services Marketing, ©1994 Quorum Books

Weitzul, James B., Sales Force Dynamics, ©1993 Quorum Books

Stanton, William J. and Richard H. Buskirk, Management of the Sales Force (Sixth Edition), ©1983
Irwin Professional Publishing

Research Studies and Papers

H.R. Chally, “The Customer-Selected World-Class Sales Excellence Ten Year Research Report,”
2000 research study

TEC, “Best Practices: Sales Force Management”

Sales Executive Council, “Shifting the Performance Curve,” 2003 research study

10 ©2005 Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group

Sales Executive Council, “Building Solutions Ready Sales Managers,” 2005

Sales Executive Council, “Simplifying Solutions Execution: Shielding Reps from Unnecessary
Complexity,” 2004

Sales Executive Council, “Competency Maps for Strategic Sales Reps,” March 2001

Sales Executive Council, “Core Competencies for Salespeople,” January 2001

LaRocca, Maggie, “The Competency Modeling Approach”, 2004 Hewlett-Packard

Del Gaizo, Dr. Ed and Seleste Lunsford, “Creating Sales Superstars: Critical Competencies for
Salespeople”, ©Achieve Global

Salesnet/CSO Insights, “The State of Selling Survey”, ©2005

Best Practices, LLC, “Benchmarking Sales Performance Management Structures,” July 2005

1
Sales Executive Council, “Shifting the Performance Curve”, 2003 research study.

©2005 Steve Gielda – Advantage Performance Group 11