Episode 026: Gretchen Gordon - How Data Science Transforms Sales Teams Results

Gretchen Gordon mentioned access to a database through Objective Management Group, the leading sales evaluation firm in the world, an assessment and evaluation company. Gretchen periodically mines the data, from 600,000 sellers, to learn what's going on in the world of sales, to help their clients be more effective. In today's world. said Gretchen, everything is a relationship sale, but it's just a ticket to get in the door as everybody must be able to build relationships. Her research found in terms of the percentage of the elements that make you able to easily build strong relationships with customers; there is only a 1% difference in terms of the attributes and the proficiency of the competency. What really differentiates the very best from the rest of the pack, is a lot of other things like, being more consultative, being the expert, qualifying, being able to reach decision-makers, being willing to push back or ask different questions; these things are far more important than just the ability to build relationships in sales. Frankly, said Gretchen, leaders, business leaders, sales leaders tend to see the same symptoms. Salespeople don't have a sense of urgency to close, they're not prospecting enough, they're not qualifying, stuff is lingering in the pipeline or they have this big bloated pipeline. What this analysis does, says Gretchen, it tells us very precisely, what the entire team needs, the elements that everybody would benefit from and their influence on what's happening. They can break it down by individual and identify what is going to accelerate sales most quickly. They can customise very specifically, individuals on a team and what the entire team needs so that they can grow sales as quickly as possible and then measure the results thereafter. Gretchen states the cool thing is there's virtually no difference in attributes or selling competencies between male or female individuals or different skin tones. When you look at the top 10% of salespeople from a data point of view, you don't know who the men are and who are the women. People tend to be comfortable when they hire people that are like themselves, right? So, they might look like you, and talk like you, but what matters is do you have the right components. This can remove some of the subconscious or unconscious bias towards hiring salespeople. We know there are far more men in sales management, and what this does is levels the playing field and says, let's evaluate based on an objective basis. What matters the most is the value proposition and understanding what value means for the client. Gretchen said, if you really do drill into the value proposition, they all know the difference between features and benefits, but frequently the benefits are the seller’s benefits. Different buyers’ needs are different and what they value is different. Focusing in on the value proposition that matters to each individual customer, each individual buyer is critically important. Buyers are more diverse than ten years ago or even two years ago. Sales decisions are impacted by multiple people and now there's a team of people. Sellers must understand what each member of the stakeholder team cares about because they're going to be different things to each stakeholder. You must do this work to be an effective salesperson. You've got to be able to understand what matters to everybody in that stakeholder team. Really focus in on the value proposition of each of the individual stakeholder and reduce the roadblock. The number one indicator of a seller's future success in sales is their willingness to change, adapt and grow. We call it commitment, meaning a commitment to doing whatever is necessary to become the best salesperson you can be. If someone is lacking this, then their potential for success is decreased. The data supports you must be agile, which means you must adapt to a changing marketplace. Gretchen was super surprised to learn from the data that most salespeople do not have personal goals and plan to achieve them. It was like night and day difference, those that did set goals achieved them. So, it inspired Gretchen to create sales action planning. It makes it so much easier for the managers instead of saying you need to make more phone calls, you need to have more meetings, you need to do more stuff. They can say, okay, how's the remodel of the kitchen coming? Is far more motivating than the manager just telling you to do more? A free copy can be obtained here https://braveheartsales.com/sales-playbook [email protected] linkedin.com/in/gretchengordonbraveheart @BraveheartSales