We had a request for some data from one of our longtime partners.

My knee-jerk reaction to her request was that it would be a big nothing burger. She asked for data that would show the difference between salespeople who are goal oriented and those who are not. I did not expect much of a difference except in the area of motivation but I was wrong. Very wrong! Check out some of the profound differences this data mining uncovered!

Objective Management Group (OMG) measures 21 sales-specific core competencies. We have data from our evaluations and assessments of 1,942,180 salespeople. Can you guess which of the 21 sales competencies shows the most profound difference between those who are goal-oriented and those who are not?

Hunting

That’s what you guessed, right? The average score for the hunting competency for goal-oriented salespeople is 82%, while those who are not goal oriented have an average score of only 68%. Goal oriented salespeople are 21% stronger at hunting. If you think about it, this makes sense because without goals or a plan, the need to prospect for new business is not as obvious or urgent. “Prospects consistently” and “maintains full pipeline” are two of the 10 attributes of the hunter competency.

Motivation

This one was a no brainer as “has written personal goals” and “has a plan to achieve goals” are two of the attributes of the motivation competency. Those who are goal oriented have an average score of 81 versus the average score of 61 for those who are not.

Revenue

This isn’t a competency but this finding was screaming for my attention. Those who are goal oriented have average revenue of $3.8 million while those who are not saw averages of only $2.7 million.

Sales Percentile

This score places salespeople in a range from 0-100. A sales percentile score of 100 would mean that a salesperson is better than 100% of all salespeople while a sales percentile score of zero would mean that 100% of all salespeople are better than this salesperson.

Goal-oriented salespeople have an average sales percentile of 64 while those who are not goal oriented have an average sales percentile of only 45. Goal oriented salespeople score 42% better.

Responsibility

Interestingly, goal oriented salespeople are 21% stronger at taking responsibility and as a result, are far less likely to make excuses for their lack of performance.

Sales DNA

Sales DNA is the combination of strengths that support the execution of sales process, sales methodology, sales strategy, and sales tactics. However, when sales DNA is weak, it sabotages rather than supports. Sales DNA isn’t learned. Sales DNA isn’t skills. So it blew my mind to see the correlation between goal oriented and stronger sales DNA. The difference is profound.

Generally speaking, as the difficulty of the selling role increases, the minimum sales DNA score required for success increases with it. For example, if you sell seven-figure capital equipment to the C-suite of enterprise-sized companies against huge competitors where the incumbent is difficult to replace, that level of difficulty requires a minimum sales DNA of 82. If you’re selling SaaS to small businesses, you can probably succeed with a sales DNA of 72. If you’re selling commercial batteries to fleet parts managers you can probably succeed with a sales DNA of 66. Goal-oriented salespeople have sales DNA that is six points higher and when it comes to sales DNA, that’s a huge difference maker.

Selling Competencies

Ten of the 21 sales core competencies that we measure are pure selling competencies, like:

1. Hunting.
2. Relationship Building.
3. Consultative Selling.
4. Value Selling.
5. Qualifying.
6. Presentation Approach.
7. Closing.
8. Sales Process.
9. CRM Savvy.
10. Social Selling Mastery.

When we combine the average scores of the 10 selling competencies above, goal oriented salespeople are 20% stronger with an average score of 60, compared to an average score of 50 for those who aren’t goal oriented.

Goal-oriented salespeople score higher in every single competency.

Here’s the Biggest Takeaway

Eighty-three percent of elite salespeople (the top 5%) have written personal goals while only 44% of weak salespeople (the bottom 50%) have written personal goals. That’s an 89% difference.

Seventy-six percent of elite salespeople have a plan for reaching their goals while only 25% of weak salespeople have a plan for reaching their personal goals. That’s a 304% difference!

Together those two findings make up the goal-oriented finding, while it alone is not predictive of sales success. However, goal oriented is an attribute of the motivation competency and that does correlate perfectly with sales success.

Those who have written personal goals and a plan are far more likely to be top performers than those who don’t. Goal setting is low-hanging fruit so why aren’t more companies providing their salespeople with professional goal setting programs?

MANA welcomes your comments on this article. Write to us at [email protected].