


He or she will make more calls in an hour and conduct more visits in a week than just about anyone else on the team. The Hard Worker shows up early, stay late, and always goes the extra mile.The Relationship Builderdoesn’t want to appear pushy, focuses on customer needs and is generous with his or her time.Through this research we found that every B2B sales rep in the world can be placed into one of the five discrete selling profiles, characterized by a specific set of skills and behaviors that defines the rep’s primary mode of interacting with customers: And here’s the kicker: the one that comes in last just happens to be the profile that most heads of sales are betting their entire strategy on. Second, one of these profiles performs dramatically better than the rest while one consistently comes in dead last. What we found may be the biggest shock to conventional sales wisdom in decades.įirst, all salespeople fall into one of five statistically derived profiles. Rather than focusing the sales conversation on features & benefits.

To better understand what sets these successful sales reps apart, CEB launched a global study of sales rep productivity involving more than 30,000 reps across hundreds of companies around the globe.Ĭhallengers teach their customers. Who are these people? What’s the key to their success? How can we bottle their magic so that others can improve their own performance? Yet even in these difficult times, every sales organization has a few stellar performers. Ask any sales leader how selling has changed in the past decade, and you’ll hear a lot of answers but only one recurring theme: It’s a lot harder.
