The Powerful Similarity Between Bad Baseball Teams and Most Sales Teams

As we do each Friday in March and April, my wife and I drove to upstate New York to watch our son’s college baseball games.  But this article isn’t only about normal, it’s also about the abnormal in both baseball and sales.

For miles along I-90 in Western Massachusetts, both on Friday and returning Monday morning, there was only 1 very weak bar of signal on Verizon’s wireless network.  Not acceptable and not normal.

The temperature for spring baseball games is usually in the 40’s and on nice weekends, the 50’s.  It touched 90 degrees for the two games on Saturday and was in the 70’s for the two Sunday games.  Very acceptable but not normal.

The leaves were on the trees!  Acceptable but not normal.

Our son had 4 hits on Saturday.  Acceptable but not normal.

I looked at the stats for the nine starters in the Friday night Boston Red Sox game and six of them had batting averages that were not only well below the league average of .243, they were all below .200. Very unacceptable and not normal.

If we look at the capabilities of a typical sales team, failing to meet the CEO’s revenue requirements, it would be quite normal for us to see two thirds of the sales team falling significantly below the industry or global averages.   Unlike the statistics used by baseball management and operations and devoured by fans, sales stats comparing sales contributors and sales teams aren’t available, preventing Senior Sales Leaders and the C Suite from seeing how their sales team compares with other sales teams in their industry.  At least that’s how the thinking goes.  But it’s untrue.  Those comparisons are available and have been available.  Objective Management Group (OMG) has those statistics on more than 2.3 million salespeople and thousands of sales teams in 200 industries.  OMG makes that data available and I’ll show you where you can see the stats for your industry, and even see how your sales team compares to both the industry norms, as well as the abnormals like the top 10% and bottom 10%.

Most executives review their sales team and determine who the A’s, B’s and C’s are based on revenue.

“Revenue is not, has never been, and never will be an indicator of sales effectiveness. “

Revenue is revenue and Executives have revenue sensitivity. Watch this 3-minute video to better understand what I mean.

Stop using revenue to rank your salespeople or to conclude that your salespeople with the most revenue are good salespeople.  It’s fiction.  It’s BS.  It’s misinformation.  It will lead you to make bad decisions.  Revenue represents what customers spend with you.  Sales effectiveness is the measure of a salesperson’s ability to grow revenue by bringing in new business.

OMG measures 21 Sales Core Competencies.  You can see the stats for all 21 competencies for all salespeople here, select your industry to see the industry-specific stats, and begin the process to see those same stats for your sales team.  This is FREE!  After seeing your aggregate scores compared to your industry and the rest of the world, you can optionally receive a variety of detailed reports and files for a fee.

Enjoy!

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