In the fast-paced landscape of today's business world, where growth is the ultimate goal, sales teams play a pivotal role. However, a growing concern looms over growth companies: the scarcity of skilled salespeople.
In this article, we will dig into the causes of this shortage, dissect its adverse impacts on growth companies, and explore the strategic measures that business owners, CEOs, and boards of directors must adopt to successfully navigate this challenge.
Where are we?
It doesn’t take much time on Google to surface a ton of credible research that paints a vivid picture of the state of modern sales forces today. Whether you lead a sales force of 1 or 1000+, you can’t escape the reality of the situation.
- Only 8% of salespeople follow a reliable sales process (Objective Management Group).
- Salespeople turnover 2 to 3 times more often than the general workforce (Harvard Business Review).
- Only 16% of sales leaders believe they have the talent required to hit their numbers (Gartner).
- The average tenure of a growth company CRO and VP Sales has shrunk to 16 and 14 months, respectively (Pavilion).
- The odds of a successful salesperson closing a forecast deal today are nearly the same as winning a pass bet at a Vegas craps table, just 49.3% (Sales Mastery).
How have CEOs of small, medium, and large companies responded? By spending an incredible amount of money:
- $800 billion a year on sales force compensation (HBR)
- $66 billion a year on sales enablement technology (HubSpot)
- $55 billion a year on sales training (Association for Talent Development, 2015)
Why is this happening?
So why aren’t these investments moving the needle? One key factor is the evolving nature of sales itself. Sales roles have transcended traditional transactional approaches to embrace consultative, value-based, and relationship-driven strategies. As a result, companies demand salespeople who not only possess basic sales acumen but also exhibit:
- Sophisticated rapport-building and leadership skills.
- A profound understanding of the customer's business and industry.
- A sincere interest in their buyers, including their desires, frustrations, responsibilities, and political risk factors.
Unfortunately, much of the training that’s available today has its roots in concepts that were first introduced by IBM in 1916, and by Xerox in 1968. If you’re still using BANT, for example, you’re using a transactional sales tool introduced by IBM in 1950. And unfortunately, modern versions of the same tool introduced in the 1990s, such as MEDDICC and MEDDPICC, offer little measurable improvement.
These acronyms may be easy to remember, but they severely limit seller and buyer to a transactional experience.
On top of this, a significant portion of existing sales forces lack the digital acumen required to thrive in an era dominated by technology. The rapid evolution of data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), and related productivity tools means that sales professionals must continually up-skill to stay relevant.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of sales training delivered today does not reflect the current sales environment. Not only have rudimentary sales skills not kept up with new demands of the profession, but most sales training falls short of delivering higher order skills. Which means what is taught simply does not deliver on the promise.
As a result, what is taught is not reinforced by managers and it is not retained by reps.
Research from the Association for Talent Development (ATD) supports this conclusion, reminding us that most salespeople forget between 84% and 90% of their training within 90 days.
What are the costs?
The shortage of skilled salespeople casts a looming shadow over growth companies, impacting their bottom lines and long-term sustainability.
Some of the negative effects include:
1. Stalled revenue growth
Sales teams are the lifeblood of growth companies. A scarcity of skilled salespeople hinders the organization's ability to qualify and convert prospects into new customers.
In today's market, customers seek personalized and tailored solutions. Skilled salespeople are adept at understanding their buyers’ desires and frustrations, exposing known and unknown points of friction, understanding the buyer’s unique definition of value, building meaningful relationships, and leading buyers to change.
The shortage of skilled salespeople means bottlenecks form in your sales pipeline, resulting in stalled opportunities, lost deals, missed forecasts, and budget shortfalls that prevent your company from fully investing in growth.
The shortage also degrades your customers' experience, which compromises their loyalty, lowers retention rates, weakens your competitiveness, and lowers the overall effectiveness of your account management and customer success teams.
2. Inefficient resource allocation
When sales forces can't consistently hit their numbers, business leaders are choosing to divert resources to fund rich compensation plans and implement new sales enablement technologies. Everything except develop higher-level sales skills.
As a result, bottom producers are being paid more for producing less. At the same time, these poor performers are costing more to onboard due to the increased expense of licensing and training reps to use a bloated and largely unproductive tech stack.
Less than 2% of sales leaders say they are very satisfied with their current sales tech stacks (Gartner). And, as I mentioned earlier, 84% of sales leaders still don’t believe they have the talent required to hit their numbers.
3. Flawed data and decisions
In the midst of all this uncertainty and stress, the scarcity of skilled salespeople can also cause CEOs and their leaders to make incorrect assumptions about the potential of their sales force and business.
A shortage of skilled salespeople means too many CEOs don’t know what it's like to work with elite sales talent. CEOs in this situation can see world class salespeople as unicorns, mythical creatures that are born, not made. They can also become convinced that their own offerings are hard to sell or can’t be sold by traditional salespeople.
These CEOs can develop a fixed mindset that overvalues the negative performance and excuses of their bottom 80%ers. And in the most extreme cases, CEOs can simply stop seeking to raise the bar for their sales force. They make the unconscious mistake of accepting the status quo.
What is the solution?
What we know for sure is that traditional approaches to sales training, bloated sales tech stacks, and rich compensation plans have simply not moved the needle in the last decade. And there are not enough elite sales leaders and reps available to support a "hire-to-fix" hiring strategy.
The time has come to make strategic changes. It’s time to upgrade your revenue engine.
There is a faster path to cash hidden within your sales organization. And the following three deliverables will get you there:
1. A sales process that creates top performers
When sales teams struggle with stalled deals, inconsistent win rates, frequent discounting, and long sales cycles, it means your sales process does not reflect your best customer’s most predictable buying patterns.
2. A sales pipeline that predicts buyer behaviors
When sales leaders are unable to accurately forecast the quality, value, and timing of a committed deal, it means the data in your sales pipeline does not reflect your best salespeople’s most repeatable sales habits.
3. A sales strategy that unites your go-to-market team
When your sales strategy falls short of its target, it often means branding, marketing, sales, and customer experience teams are operating as disconnected silos instead of a single, scalable revenue engine.
While the global shortage of skilled salespeople is a problem, it’s a problem that growth company leaders can solve.
If you’re curious about the impact my WINS Model™ can have on your sales and revenue teams, reach out via my contact page and I'll set you up with one of our free self-assessments. There is a better way!
Together,
