Sales representatives in the wrong roles. The issue of sumo wrestlers participating in the Tour de France.

Too long; Didn't read

Good sales people in the wrong seat. Or role misalignment: Why your sales team might have some sumos cycling the Tour de France. And why it's costing you a fortune.

The article uses the analogy of sumo wrestlers and Tour de France cyclists to illustrate a crucial point in sales: not all roles require the same attributes, and putting the wrong person in the wrong seat leads to failure — just like asking a sumo to climb Mont Ventoux.]

Key Takeaways:

• Role misalignment in sales teams is widespread and costly. Many under performers aren't lazy or poorly trained — they're simply in the wrong role.

• Data from 5,000+ sales assessments shows that only 43% of salespeople are in their best-fit roles. And only 34% of misaligned reps hit quota vs 58% of well-matched ones

• That’s a potential 2x performance boost just by matching people to the right sales role.

• There are two causes of sales role misalignment. Firstly a recruitment process that is placing people in the wrong role. And a change of sales strategy, GTM or market dynamics, yet sales people sticking to long held roles.

Bottom line: If you’re not evaluating for role fit, you’re burning money and setting people up to fail. Time to get your "sumos" and "cyclists" in the right race?

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Do you have sumos riding the Tour de France in your revenue engine?

Professional athletes are amazing. Look at the sport of sumo — the wrestlers, known as rikishi, excel in what they do despite what, to the untrained eye, could appear as unfit people. On the other end of the scale, have you seen what cyclists on the Tour de France look like? They’re incredibly slim and yet they literally climb mountains.

In sport, to be at the top of your game, depending on the sport you play, you need different attributes. Even the power in the legs of a rikishi is, I suppose, a different type of power than the one in a cyclist’s legs.

So if you put a rikishi on a bike or a cyclist on the dohyō (the ring), neither would perform. You’d simply be setting them up for failure even if they are strong athletes.

What is deadly obvious in sport is, however, not so obvious to many company leaders when it comes to staffing their sales teams. Typically, when there is a disconnect between expected results and actual performance, sales leadership is quick to point the finger in the usual directions:

• A lack of effort

• Poor training

• Or even worse, they point the finger outward and blame a challenging market (thus giving their colleagues on the ground carte blanche to use the exact same excuse)

But aren't company leaders forgetting a few things?

Looking beyond the obvious. Role misalignment.

In fact, there are many other possible reasons for poor performance. The sales team might be winging it due to a lack of a robust sales process, or there may be no methodology in place. Sales management might be underperforming, the sales culture could be the root cause — the list goes on.

But could it be, more simplistically, that some teams have rikishi (aka Sumos) in a role that a cyclist would be better equipped to do? And vice versa?

Could it be that, in their sales hiring or talent management processes, they've simply put the wrong people in the wrong seats? For example, a salesperson might be in a channel sales role and not delivering, when in fact they could be outperforming in an enterprise selling role. Could role misalignment be the silent killer of many sales organisations?

When we work with companies to resolve sales issues, Curiosity rolls out a data-driven approach. That means no “off-the-shelf” sales training, because there’s no such thing as a standard organisation. But more importantly, we always start to uncover the root causes of the issues the leadership isn't happy with and we build a tailored roadmap for transformation - you can find samples here -.

And very often, we find rikishi in charge of climbing Mont Ventoux (a classic Tour de France stage if you're not familiar with the race), or cyclists having to win on the dohyō and face sumo wrestlers.

In other words, people in the wrong roles.

What is role misalignment in sales ?

Great question. At the risk of stating the obvious (which, frankly, is one of my core strengths), not all sales roles are equal. The attributes needed to succeed in each role vary greatly. Naturally, so will the strengths of each salesperson.

At the organisational level, sales success depends on processes, methodology, recruitment practices, and effective management (you can find a self-evaluation of your sales organisation here). But at the individual level, success hinges on 21 core competencies — plus key traits like coachability, posturing, and other intangibles.

Not sales role are born equal. Do you know what competency is required for what role?

So let’s take some examples.

An enterprise sales executive, selling large-ticket items, needs deep value selling and consultative skills. And because senior executives are typically strong-willed, the salesperson needs a low need for approval to ask challenging questions and handle tough conversations.

On the flip side, a channel salesperson isn’t driving decisions. Channel sales means selling without authority. They won’t face buyers directly, but will need strong relationship-building and account management skills — something an enterprise AE focused on “selling and moving on” likely doesn’t excel at.

So role misalignment could simply mean putting someone who’s naturally strong in channel sales into an enterprise AE role — and vice versa.

Is it really a big issue worth worrying about?

I sense some scepticism — and I welcome it. We teach salespeople the value of healthy scepticism every day. So here’s some data from our partner, Objective Management Group (OMG), on this very issue (you can find here their own report on the topic):

• 64% of companies have more than half of their salespeople in the wrong role (based on ~100 assessments)

• Out of 5,323 salespeople assessed, only 43% were in their best-fit role

That means more than one in two are misaligned. If companies were flipping coins to assign roles, they’d get better results.

So in short, yes. It is a big issue. And costing a large amount of money. Take the data from OMG. Only 34% of those not in the right role are hitting quota — compared to 58% of those who are. That’s a potential near 2x improvement in performance, simply by aligning people with the right role.

(NDLR: Now imagine what a 2x sales performance would mean in earnings for your business. Could it be differential? Is it worth a conversation? If so, let me know, happy to discuss).

What are the causes for role misalignment ?

There are typically two main culprits:

Firstly, a poor recrutement. Selling is a unique function and the below are classic mistakes made while hiring sales people:

• Lack of sales-specific evaluation before interviews. Humans are biased — once your HR, TAM or sales manager meets a candidate, judgement is clouded by human biases. The solution? Evaluate before you meet. Click here to obtain some samples.

• A weak recruitment process. Too many organisations recruit salespeople the exact same way they recruit engineers or marketers. Big mistake which we help fix in our B2B sales recruitment offering`. As a first step, you can click here to download an auto-evaluation of your hiring process or here to obtain 12 tips to hire and retain top sales people.

• Confusing charisma and confidence with competence. Recruiters often favour confident, outgoing candidates. But what matters is the mindset that will enable the person to persist under duress, be able to stick to a clear sales process, ask the consultative questions rather than spewing features and benefits and many other characteristics? A proven ability to sell in a very specific business environment, at a specific price point, in a specific sales cycle.

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The second reason is, typically,  a change in market conditions or expectations for the role.

In that case, it could be that the recruitment has been properly done initially. But nothing stays the same.

As Heraclitus said, "change is the only constant". So various things could have changed, either internally or externally. For example, macro-environment has changed and budget have tightened up (as it currently is, see this post here). So accessing decision makers quickly is no more a nice to have. It's a must have.

Or internally, a company might initially have a BDR + AE model (expectations of cold calling is low on the AE side) to a full cycle selling model (AE has to heavily prospect) or the product might have changed and the complexity of the selling improved.

But the sales organisation hasn't changed and the same people are still in the same place...

What to do about role misalignment then?

As mentioned, success in sales is multifactorial. As a first step, that would take 5 minutes, if you want to have a quick analysis of your overall sales organisation and identify possible gaps, this simple tool might provide answers.

Alternatively, you could organise a deeper audit of your sales organisations to answer a range of questions. Today's article focus on a simple question we often hear: "do we have the right people in the right places". A Sales Efficiency and Improvement Analysis could provide you with many more answers and enable you to develop the roadmap to sales excellence that your organisation truly deserve. If so, here again, get in touch for a frank and direct conversation.