Gong Labs
This Bad Habit Keeps Your “Average Reps” Below Quota
The key difference between your superstar sales reps and your average reps comes down to sales conversations.
But… how exactly are their sales conversations different?
Dozens of ways.
Many of which are specific to you and your team.
But here’s one BIG difference we found through our data analysis research:
Superstar reps have business- and value-related discussions far more often than their below-quota peers.
These stats are pulled from analyzing nearly 1 million sales calls with natural language processing (NLP).
The calls in this study were recorded using conversation intelligence technology, transcribed from speech-to-text, and analyzed with machine learning to detect key patterns and topics that were discussed.
As you can see in the above chart, superstar reps talk about “business and value” a whopping 52 percent more often than their peers do.
For context, here’s an example list of topics that fit into the “business and value” category:
Notice that top reps (those above 120 percent of quota) address product feature and technical discussions 39 percent less often than their quota-missing teammates.
This, ladies and gentleman, summarizes one of the key factors that keeps your “average” reps below quota:
They are feature-heavy rather than business value-heavy.
Coaching your reps to go from one to the other is key to shifting your “middle of the pack” reps up a notch.
These stats are pulled from analyzing nearly 1 million sales calls with natural language processing (NLP).
The calls in this study were recorded using conversation intelligence technology, transcribed from speech-to-text, and analyzed with machine learning to detect key patterns and topics that were discussed.
As you can see in the above chart, superstar reps talk about “business and value” a whopping 52 percent more often than their peers do.
For context, here’s an example list of topics that fit into the “business and value” category:
- Return on investment (ROI)
- The buyer’s business challenges
- The buyer’s business environment
- The buyer’s decision-making ecosystem
- Ongoing support and project implementation
- Value-related topics (as opposed to feature-related topics – they sell the hole, not the drill)
Notice that top reps (those above 120 percent of quota) address product feature and technical discussions 39 percent less often than their quota-missing teammates.
This, ladies and gentleman, summarizes one of the key factors that keeps your “average” reps below quota:
They are feature-heavy rather than business value-heavy.
Making the Transition from One to the Other
Fortunately, there’s more to the story. In this study, we tracked each reps’ rank-order on their team in terms of performance. Who was #1 on the team? Who was in 2nd place, 3rd place, etc.? We also kept track of movement up and down the leaderboard. What were the commonalities of reps that moved up from 5th place to 4th place, or from 8th place to 6th place, for example? There are many factors that influenced this. But the most glaring commonality was this: Reps that moved up in rankings transitioned from being “feature heavy” to “business- and value-heavy.” Reps that did not move up the rankings, stayed “feature heavy.”
Coaching your reps to go from one to the other is key to shifting your “middle of the pack” reps up a notch.