The truth about UK salespeople revealed

Silent Edge, the sales performance authority, today released the results of its first extensive analysis of sales performance in the UK. And it reveals that an alarming percentage of British salespeople are long on style but short on substance!

In benchmarking sales teams at ten blue-chip companies in various markets including telecoms, tech, FMCG and food, the strengths and weaknesses of British salespeople are exposed for the first time.

The salespeople benchmarked were evaluated in action, during actual presentations to live clients. Their performances were scored against Silent Edgeís unique and exhaustive 137 point matrix which clearly reveals collective and individual strengths and weaknesses.

What are Britainís salespeople good at? Perhaps unsurprisingly, schmoozing is near the top of the list! Personal presentation, establishing rapport, and being able to deliver line and verse on the product being sold seem to come naturally. Sales people are not bad at managing the meeting process so long as things stay on track, either.

But where do they fail? In areas where a deviation from the straightforward pitch is required, according to the evidence. By far the majority of sales people do a poor job of explaining the value proposition, of direct negotiating with the prospect, of handling and overcoming objections, and of differentiating themselves from the competition.

According to Silent Edge co-founder and managing director Russell Ward, sales people alone arenít to blame for this state of affairs. Ward observes: Itís true that a great many salespeople arenít as good as they think they are, but dig a little deeper and you find the reason for that is in large part because their companies do little to help them work effectively. All too often we see sales people swimming against a tide of poorly developed collateral and ineffective sales management.

Ward continues: Two problems are fundamental. First, an alarming percentage of sales managers are not good at their jobs, a far greater percent than the number of ineffective salespeople. This means salespeople are not able to rely on which should be their primary source of help. Silent Edge co-founder Lorna Dakars picks up the theme: It seems that, as a rule, leading salespeople are promoted into sales management and this is neither a logical nor valid career path. The skills required to manage and the skills necessary to sell are entirely different; being good at one does not suggest likely success at the other.

Dakars continues: Secondly, all too often sales people are poorly trained. Many have little more than a cursory understanding of the products theyíre selling so they donít have access to the level of information and detail necessary to close any but the most straightforward sales. Sometimes the problem is unhelpful collateral materials, sometimes itís a failure to simply grasp the value proposition.

Ward and Dakars both believe that though the Silent Edge analysis reveals serious flaws in the performance of UK salesforces, on a more optimistic note the problems are easily correctable. Says Ward: Putting the right people in the right jobs; identifying individual strengths and weaknesses and then training staff for improved performance is not rocket science.


The results of Silent Edgeís Survey were:

Areas of Strength in UK sales performance (over 80% grade)
- Personal presentation 95
- Rapport with prospect 92
- Company offerings 80
- Product/Service knowledge 80

Areas of acceptable performance (over 70% grade)
- Meeting management 73

Areas of weakness in performance (under 40% grade)
Company background 36
Set agenda 28
Anecdotes 27
Differentiation from the competition 26
Objection handling capability 26
Position the company 25
Case study 21
Negotiation skills 15
The Value Proposition 14