How Many Salespeople Shouldn’t be in Sales?

Our certified sales development expert in Singapore, Ray Bigger, of Think8, asked if we had data on what percentage of salespeople should be considered for a different role.  Of course we do, Ray! In this case, a different role doesn’t mean a different sales role, it means that they suck so bad and have such a small upside, they shouldn’t be in sales – period. And if we’re going to talk about salespeople that should be either redeployed or relieved of duty, we should also know the stat for salespeople that aren’t trainable.  In this case, not trainable has no relation to how good they are, it refers only to whether they have the incentive to change and improve as salespeople.  Look at the graph below:

In the graph, you can see that there are about twice as many salespeople that should be redeployed as there are strong salespeople and about twice as many untrainable salespeople as there are that should be redeployed.

The statistics show that:

22% are not trainable
10% should be redeployed
6% are elite

If you have a sales force, you already know if you have one of the 6%.  But do you know if you know which of your salespeople can become 6%ers?  And do you know which ones fall into the redeploy and can’t train categories?  They may not be who you think they are.  You have to evaluate your sales force in order to find out.