Last post I introduced you to the five profiles of sales reps from the research of Mathew Dixon and Brent Adamson. To recap, let’s take a look at them again.
1. The Hard Worker
Always willing to go the extra mile, self motivated and interested in feedback and development.
2. The Relationship Builder
Builds strong advocates in customer organisations, generous in giving time to help others and gets
along with everyone.
3. The Lone Wolf
Follows own instincts, self assured but difficult to control.
4. The Reactive Problem Solver
Reliably responds to all stakeholders, ensures that all problems are solved and is detail orientated.
5. The Challenger
Always has a different view of the world, understands the customer’s business, loves to debate and
pushes the customer.
So which would you prefer to have on your team? They all look good! The finding of the research was that when you take these five profiles and compare them to actual sales performance, one in particular performs head and shoulders above the other four and one falls dramatically behind.
So what’s the deal? Here is a summary of the findings grouped in what were determined to be be “Core” or “Star” performers:
Core Star
Challenger 23% 39%
Lone Wolf 15% 25%
Hard Worker 22% 17%
Reactive Problem Solver 14% 12%
Relationship Builder 26% 7%
Interestingly the distribution of core performers across the five profiles is fairly even. No profile really dominates among average sales reps. But when you look at the distribution of star performers across the same five profiles you find something completely different. There is clearly a dominant way to be a star and that is the Challenger profile.
I trust that this has got you thinking! I can’t give you the full research findings in this quick grab but if you want to know more I can recommend the The Challenger Sale as a must read sales book.
As always if you want to discuss this further with me please drop me a line richard@coumans.com.au
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