2mm to Sales Mastery | Defining Selling Competencies and Data

Part One on Defining Selling Competencies for Sales Reps

By Joe DiDonato | Chief of Staff | Baker Communications, Inc.

When you make the transition to Data-Driven Sales Enablement, one of the first tasks is to determine the knowledge, skills and abilities, and other requirements needed to perform successfully as a seller.  This collection of knowledge, skills, abilities, and requirements are known as a job function’s ‘competencies.’  Examples of some of the top competencies used broadly are attributes like teamwork, responsibility, business acumen, decision-making, communication skills, leadership skills, trustworthiness, ethics, and results orientation.

While these are great general competencies, in the world of sales, the competencies we want to measure tend to be a little more specific to the seller’s daily activities.  We divide them into four major categories: Selling Competencies, Sales DNA, the Will to Sell, and specific Industry Knowledge. These are the competencies that we measure with our customers to determine how good a fit a candidate or person in a role is for their jobs.  It also produces the data we need to develop individual and team training and coaching.

This data is comparable to lab work, MRI’s, X-Rays, and other diagnostics used to detect a patient’s malady.  Without data, everything else is guesswork.

We use a huge repository of data that is the result of assessing over 2 million salespeople, at over 31,000 companies, in 200 different industries, and 140 countries.  We’ve found the statistical validity of using this repository to drive hiring and training to be over 91%.

In this first part, I’m going to cover 10 of the 21 Sales Core Competencies that we use.  These selling competencies are listed below with a brief description of each.

The Hunting Competency – This measures a seller’s ability to prospect for new business.  It looks at 12 competency sub-components or attributes like whether they will make cold calls, the sales DNA that might get in the way of making those prospecting calls, as well as their ability to reach a decision-maker and fill their pipeline. 79% of the top 10% of sellers show this as a strong competency, while only 36% of the bottom 10% showed it as a strong competency.

Reaching Decision Makers – This measures the 7 attributes that determine whether sellers will get to the decision-makers or fail to reach them.  73% of the top 10% of sellers excel at this competency, while only 18% of the bottom 10% have this ability.

The Relationship Building Competency – This competency tells you how good a person is at building a relationship, versus just finding common ground.  Mastering this competency is key to developing a consultative selling style.  Only 50% of the top 10% of sellers have this mastered.  This competency is made of 6 components or other attributes.

The Consultative Selling Competency – This shows how good a person is at asking questions and diving deeper into the buyer’s needs.  This consultative selling approach combines excellent listening and interview skills to find how your company can add real value for your clients and prospects.  65% of the top 10% of sellers use a consultative approach to a sales opportunity to uncover the compelling reasons to buy.  Only 22% of the bottom 10% of sellers have this skill.  This competency is made up of 9 components and attributes.

Selling Value – This measures a salesperson’s ability to quantify the opportunity and “sell value” rather than sell based on price alone.  Instead of compromising margins with discounts, top sellers can articulate why their solution beats other lower-priced competitors.  80% of the top sellers have this competency, while only 31% of the bottom sellers possess this ability.  This competency is made up of 12 competency components.

The Qualifying Competency – This analyzes a seller’s ability to thoroughly qualify an opportunity.  This competency is made up of 10 attributions. The analysis here is on how thorough the seller is in their approach to a sales deal.  77% of the top sellers are strong in this skill, while only 27% of the bottom sellers can demonstrate this skill.

The Presentation Approach and Context Competency – This competency assesses a salesperson’s effectiveness in presenting the right content, to the right people, at the right time during a sales campaign.  87% of top sellers excel at this skill, but 62% of the bottom sellers also show strength in this area.  This competency contains 9 attributes or components.

The Closing Competency – This measures a seller’s ability to get business closed on a timely basis.  There are 8 components or attributes under this competency, and it’s where most sellers have difficulty.  Across all salespeople, only 24% demonstrate competency here.  Only 46% of the top sellers demonstrate strong skills here, and 9% of bottom sellers demonstrate strong skills.

The Milestone-Centric Sales Process Competency – This is a seller’s ability to follow a staged, milestone-centric sales process.  This is an important competency in creating repeatability and predictability.  There are 9 attributes assessed in this competency.  72% of top sellers exhibit this quality, while only 26% of the bottom sellers show ability here.

The Sales Technology Competency – This competency shows a salesperson’s ability to leverage CRM, Social Selling, and video proficiency for sales success.  This competency contains 22 sub-components and attributes.  Only 58% of top sellers demonstrate skill in this competency, and only 23% of the bottom sellers show any strength here.

In part two of this article, we will deal with the remaining 11 selling competencies.  If you would like to learn more about using data to drive your hiring and training, we invite you to attend our upcoming webinar: How To Implement Data-Driven Sales Enablement on January 29, 2021.  Register or view the webinar here: https://www.bakercommunications.com/webinars/How-To-Implement-Data-Driven-Sales-Enablement.html.