Understanding the Sales Force by Dave Kurlan
What if there was a way to project sales success even more so than what Objective Management Group has mastered during the past 23 years?
What if we could do what Bill James and a bunch of sabermaticians have done in Baseball?
Not that long ago, baseball hitting statistics were limited to batting average (AVE), Runs Batted In (RBI) and Home Runs (HR). Pitching statistics used to be limited to Wins (W), Losses (L) and Earned Run Average (ERA).
Today, the sabermaticians have developed statistics that better identify the value of a ball player and some of them, like On Base Percentage (OBP) and On Base Plus Slugging (OPS) have worked their way into baseball’s mainstream. They also have metrics like WHIP (Walks and Hits per Inning Pitched) and WAR (Wins above Replacement) and many more.
The saber gurus have even found ways to equalize the effects of different stadiums, competition, times of year, match ups, and more. Some of them even project how stars of years past would fare against the stars of today! And every year Bill James projects how each major league player will perform in the coming year.
Back to my original question, what if there was a way to project sales success even more so than what Objective Management Group has mastered during the past 23 years?
What if we could not only predict whether a sales candidate will succeed in your business, selling your offerings at your prices to your prospects against your competition, and with your challenges as we currently do, but also project how their history would translate in terms of likely revenue? Not from guessing but calculated from some sophisticated new algorithms.
Cool, huh?
Don’t get too excited though because we aren’t there yet. However, that is my next ambitious project. Let me know what you think about it and I’ll keep you posted on my progress.
