- October 25, 2024
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
I love it when readers forward links to me, hoping I will debunk the article in a Blog post. That’s what happened when Mike Shannon sent me the link to a recent Success Magazine article entitled, “Born to Sell? The Science Behind Adaptive Learning and What it Means for Entrepreneurs.”
That is actually a revised title as the HTML <title> code revealed that the original title was, “What the Science of Sales Means for Entrepreneurs.” I knew this would be a page of crap when they managed to retain the word “science” in the title, but replaced the word “sales” with “adaptive learning.” I thought the article was about being born to sell. Talk about a misleading title!
In 2011 I wrote an article that actually used science to answer the question of whether salespeople are born or made to sell. The only science in the Success Magazine article comes from one of the two studies the article references, but the article itself doesn’t have any sales or science. It’s about sales compensation!
Let’s begin with the parameters of the author’s “study.” The word “study” is in quotes because the sample size consisted of a whopping 117 telemarketers in Asia, where sales best practices are decades behind where they are in the US, Canada and some of Europe. To make matters worse (for me), telemarketers are script readers pushing one-way monologues, not salespeople engaging in a two-way conversations. The author said they found a correlation between sales and genetic DNA, yet their title said it was about Entrepreneurs, and the article itself said the connection was between DNA and Marketing. Everything in the article was disconnected.
The author’s study measured things like revenue (an outcome), spotting opportunities (Different from identifying opportunities? Something to do with leopards?), and effort (how sales-specific of them!), none of which are actually sales competencies. What seemed most wack-job crazy to me is how they compared what they called “metrics” to genetics, to show that when it came to predicting sales success, genetic traits outweigh personality traits. How in the world did they uncover genetic traits? Oh yeah , that’s right, they didn’t.
They used personality traits as their control and despite decades of trying, study authors have never, ever, even once, shown a correlation between personality traits and sales success.
Several years ago, I wrote an article that was a fantastic example of how personality traits don’t measure anything having to do with sales. You’ll love it!
One CEO cited in the Success Magazine article concluded that Adaptive Learning is the genetic DNA trait that differentiates successful people from the rest. So it wasn’t even about sales or marketing or entrepreneurial metrics. The article is shamelessly pushing adaptive learning.
The study author identified five genetic traits possessed by sales/marketers/entrepreneurs who outperform others. They claim those are:
- Tailor Your Approach
- Conduct a Sales Debrief
- Refine Your Skills Through Practice and Experimentation
- Use Data Analytics to Inform Your Decision Making
- Invest in Ongoing Training and Mentorship
Other than number 2 (of course we’re singling out #2 in an article that’s full of crap!), the other four are not sales or marketing specific but are simply common-sense goals for anyone interested in self-improvement. Perhaps they could have concluded that salespeople (or any other profession?) who are dedicated to self-improvement will outperform those who aren’t. Nah, that would have been so easy they would have only had a single paragraph. Not nearly enough for a magazine article!
The author also introduced a study by Quotapath on “Solving the Biggest Sales Compensation Problems.” Qutoapath’s website said it was a 2024 report but the study properties showed it was converted to PDF in 2023. It’s difficult to determine when it was first written or when the study was conducted. In the study, 450 revenue leaders said that 80% of their reps are not hitting quota and their reps found it difficult to understand their comp plans, taking as long as 3-6 months to fully grasp them. This suggests that the 450 companies surveyed are all large to enterprise sized companies. How do I know? They’re the biggest creators/offenders of crappy, poorly designed, over-complicated compensation plans. For example, check out the compensation plan I wrote about a few years ago.
Back to the five genetic traits. Crappy #2 refers to a debrief, or sales coaching on a specific customer interaction or tactic from yesterday or today. The study suggested that sales coaching can be used to compensate for those poorly constructed sales compensation plans.
Not only are crappy comp plans and sales coaching unrelated, they are not sales competencies, and they are not genetic.
In summary, this article was nothing more than a few bad ideas strung together to justify an article. They included two studies – one on comp plans and one on telemarketers – and hoped the two studies would give the theories, that had so little to do with selling, credibility.
They failed.
Shame on Success Magazine for publishing such crap.
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