A study by the ES Research Group notes that 30% of sales people are not suited for their jobs. That bears repeating. 30% of sales people are not suited for their jobs. Why? Because they lack critical behavioral traits such as self-motivation, intelligence, persuasiveness, resilience and curiosity.  These personality traits, which correlate closely with sales ability, occur in only 20% of the population according to Geoffrey James of the Sales Machine. 

 

So let’s net this out. Professional selling requires characteristics that most people do not possess and a whole lot of people who call themselves sales reps don’t have these characteristics. This is why 4% of the country's salespeople sell 94% of the goods and services.* 

 

A professional sales person is like a thoroughbred racehorse. They don’t pull plows even though they technically can. So why do so many organizations create job descriptions that have their racehorses in charge of company marketing or submitting estimate requests or managing other sales people or cajoling technical resources to do their jobs? Sure, sales people can do these things, but so can a lot of other people who can’t sell. 

 

A few months ago I volunteered to help a struggling non-profit put together a program for an event they were sponsoring. This hardworking group of volunteers didn't understand the complexity of laying out a 48 page book, getting it printed, perfect bound and delivered on time for the event so I stepped in. My company put the book together gratis, found a vendor for both the print and the perfect binding and made sure it looked great and was delivered on time.  We did our part for free and they paid for the printing but since we knew where to go, they got a better price than they would have and the non -profit was able to retain more of the proceeds to help the organization.