Are your “average” sales performers the real secret to revenue success? ​If your goal is to create a higher-performing salesforce, focusing on your top closers is far less effective than engaging your average or "middle" tier reps. Why? Greater numbers and more room for improvement make this middle core of your team a much more likely source of significant revenue growth. In fact, data shows that ​a 5% performance improvement from the middle 60% yielded over 70% more revenue on average than a similar 5% shift in the top 20% alone. In this eBook, Qstream's experts explore the untapped potential of your sales organization’s “middle” tier, and share how new, mobile technologies are helping to transform sales behavior and drive new revenues.

1. Why You Must Stop Ignoring Your
“Average” Sales Performers
Strategies for Making Them the Secret to Your
Revenue Success

2. | 2
Table of Contents
3
If your goal is to create a higher-performing sales force,
focusing on your top closers is far less effective than
engaging the middle. Why? Greater numbers and more room
for improvement make the middle core of your team a much
more likely source of significant revenue growth.
5
6
page
page
page
Introduction
Who Makes Up ‘The
Middle’?
Shifting the Focus from
Process to People
page
7
The Science of
Changing Sales
Behavior
page
8
Building Better
Coaches
page
10
About Qstream

3. | 3
Introduction
Are Your “Average” Sales
Performers the Real Secret to
Revenue Success?
According to CSO Insights, on average
only 57% of salespeople make quota,
which of course means that 43% fail to
deliver on target. This is the perennial
quandary of every sales manager: “How
do I keep my biggest closers performing
at the highest levels, while developing
my non-performers to increase our
chances of successfully, and predictably,
achieving quota?” This eBook aims to
answer that.
When evaluating team performance, the
experts will point to the established
20/60/20 Rule: 20% of the sales
organization will be top performers; 60%
percent will reside in the middle and
consistently fall shy of quota; and 20%
will dramatically underperform and
remain at risk.
Some managers subscribe to the axiom
that “success breeds success,” and
simply choose to focus on their most
valuable team members to close
revenue short-falls. While its tempting to
allocate more resources to your biggest
closers, data shows that focusing only
on top performers yields limited results.
In contrast, the revenue math is solidly
behind the upside of creating
performance gains in the middle of the
organization, rather than relying solely on
the top 20%.
A recent Sales Executive Council (SEC)
study1 found that a 5% performance
improvement from the middle 60%
yielded over 70% more revenue on
average than a similar 5% shift in the top
20% alone.
Success requires not just increased
focus on this key group, but also new
techniques and technologies that can:
• Clearly and quickly identify key skills
or knowledge gaps that are holding
back your “middle” reps;
• Reinforce key messages and data
points that will make reps more
successful in the field, while creating
behavioral changes that can support
more deals over the long-term; and
• Support more effective coaching
among your sales leadership that
helps not just the middle, but
everyone.
“At the end of the day, WHO your
managers coach is just as important
as HOW they coach. The data
suggests that organizations should
do away with coaching
democratically and instead shift the
majority of their focus away from
low and star performers and
towards the core.”
- “The Dirty Secret of Effective Sales
Coaching,” Harvard Business Review

4. “A 5% performance gain from the middle 60% yields
over 70% more revenue than a 5% shift in the top 20%.”
| 4
Accelerate Growth or Evaluate
for Reassignment
Sales/Revenue Performance
Number of Employees
20%
Source: “Shifting the Performance Curve,” Sales Executive Council.
60%
Accelerate
Growth
20%
Maintain and Grow

5. | 5
Who Makes Up the
Middle?
At 60%, this identified “middle” is the
majority of your sales workforce, and
thus represents the greatest potential
return for improvement. But this 60% is
not created equal, and unlike your top
performers, this group is likely to be
highly diverse.
Demographics may vary widely based
on age, competency, work experience,
and access to resources. Many may be
former A-players who have simply fallen
behind their potential. Others are likely
younger or less tenured employees who
have not yet developed the necessary
skills to meet their goals. This diversity
also means that no one incentive model,
financial or otherwise, will be universally
effective.
Sirius Decisions’ annual Sales
Enablement study2 revealed some
interesting new data about what
managers believe are the biggest
business issues affecting sales. Given
the growing complexity of most B2B
sales cycles, the top vote-getters in this
study, which highlighted the challenge
for reps to connect with a prospect’s
business issues and/or convey business
value, are perhaps not surprising.
More astounding was respondent data
that identified issues related to key
knowledge and skills gaps within their
sales force. For example:
• 35% of respondents cited an inability
of their reps to respond to today’s
more educated buyer;
• 24% said their reps lack the required
knowledge to sell successfully; and
• 29% said their reps lacked the
necessary selling skills.
Given the tremendous investments in
sales enablement technologies in recent
years, up to $2.4 million per company in
2014 according to the same Sirius
Decisions study, why are so many reps
still “average”?
The good news is that in practice, this
group can reap the most benefit from
coaching and targeted skills
reinforcement, once gaps are clearly
understood. But for many organizations
a distinct shift away from processes and
assets, and toward people, is required.
“While organizations are making
ever greater investment in
technologies and operational
processes to improve
performance, sales leaders cited
training and development as
being one of their greatest
challenges to improving
performance. This included
better sales skills, product
knowledge and industry
knowledge.”
- Sales Management
Association

6. For many organizations, these solutions
have provided unique benefits,
particularly when a sales force has
specific challenges around
communication (based on geographic
diversity, for example) and/or marketing
asset management (based on the sheer
number and flavor of products and
services sold, and the need to keep
them updated based on new versions,
etc.) These solutions may also help to
reduce the amount of time your sales
force spends on non-selling (i.e.,
administrative) tasks. But can these
technologies really impact revenue
achievement, and do they address the
root-causes of poor performance?
| 6
Shifting the Focus
from Process to
People
Most sales managers would agree that
success requires reps to possess the
necessary skills, knowledge, tools and
assets to maximize every interaction
with a potential buyer. To address this
need, a fast-growing segment of sales
enablement solution providers have
emerged in recent years. Whether
software or services-based, the vast
majority of these providers are focused
on aligning sales and marketing
processes to ensure that sales reps
understand the library of tools available
to them, and that they can successfully
apply them based on a buyer’s specific
need within the sales cycle.
Sales education is no longer just an HR or training
function.
• Since 2012, there has been a 19% increase in the sales
enablement function reporting to the sales organization3.
• The average sales enablement budget doubled between
2012 and 2014 from $1.2 million to $2.4 million4.

7. | 7
The Science of
Changing Sales
Behavior
What is clear is that the world of B2B
buyers and sellers is complex. In most
cases, your reps will have just minutes to
add value to the conversation. This
requires not just recall, but mastery of
the product, market, competitive and
business dynamics driving a customer’s
buying decision process.
Despite the specific training methods or
sales methodology employed by your
organization, sales reps SELL, based on
what they KNOW. So, how do you get
visibility to what this core group really
knows and understands, and once gaps
are identified, how do you transform
your reps’ behavior to truly “move the
needle?”
While traditional, in-person sales training
and e-learning systems are an important
part of the sales enablement puzzle, they
are rarely sufficient on their own. Post-training
reinforcement and coaching is
key, particularly in light of ‘the forgetting
curve.’
Simply stated, forgetting is a natural,
physiological occurrence and must be
factored into any change process. The
forgetting curve specifically describes
the dramatic drop-off in knowledge over
time – often before new information and
skills can be put into practice. Studies
show that in just a matter of days and
weeks, up to 79% of new information is
forgotten. It’s simply a matter of how the
human brain works. Add to this the
normal chaos of any time-starved sales
rep’s day, and you begin to see the
problem at scale.
To replicate the success of top
performers among the middle 60%,
sales executives must design a program
that addresses the forgetting curve and
behaviors inherent to this dynamic
regardless of time or money spent on
training. For the middle 60%, this
means recognizing the importance of not
just results (a lagging indicator), but also
readiness (a leading indicator).

8. | 8
This transformation begins with the
acknowledgement that sales reps are
people, and people are complex. People
possess ingrained behavior, and
changing that behavior – equipping sales
reps to win – doesn’t happen with death
by PowerPoint. While this may sound
very academic, a team of researchers at
Harvard has shown that using a
combination of interval reinforcement
and active recall in short bursts can
effectively increase retention by up to
170% and durably change ingrained
sales behaviors.
Build Better Coaches with
Predictive, Data-Driven
Management Insights
A 2014 Sales Management Association
(SMA) study5 on sales coaching revealed
that despite the stated importance of
coaching as a sales performance
accelerator, the biggest obstacle to
consistent coaching was lack of time on
the part of managers (and to a certain
extent lack of coaching skill). As a result,
managers were more likely to engage on
a highly informal basis, often focused on
a single opportunity.
Given the strong links to coaching and
higher-performing organizations, many
sales executives are turning to
technology to deliver the insights they
require for more focused coaching.
But how can these powerful insights be
derived at scale? For more and more
companies, it can be as simple as letting
reps play a game for minutes a day on
their smartphone.
Employing a mobile platform such as the
one developed by Qstream, managers
across an array of industries push
simple, scenario-based challenge
questions to sales professionals every
few days. Using their mobile device, reps
submit answers and can immediately
see the correct answer and why. A
combination of onboard game
mechanics and social collaboration
deliver engagement rates of 90% or
greater, while a sophisticated, onboard
analytics engine instantly compiles the
data points from aggregate responses to
deliver actionable, real-time insights to
management – including targeted
coaching opportunities.
Is Your Sales Enablement Solution
Really Built for Sales?
Applying technology to bolster selling
skills, reinforce key messages and improve
sales performance requires them to be:
Simple - to both learn and use,
ensuring reps will participate.
Fast - how much time must reps
devote on a daily basis?
Convenient - can reps access the
solution in a time and place that
works best for their on-the-go
lifestyle?
Engaging - what motivation does
the solution provide to keep reps
coming back for more?
Measurable - what reporting and
analytics are available to help
managers target performance
issues and develop appropriate
coaching strategies?

9. | 9
Qstream’s data showed that within
regulated industries some 31% of reps
could not correctly answer questions
identified by sales and marketing teams
as critical for broad market context
within their respective industries on the
first attempt. Figures were significantly
higher in unregulated industries involving
generic selling skills with 46% of
respondents answering incorrectly on
first attempt.
After presenting sales reps with key
market and product questions a second
time, following a short interval of a few
days, sales rep performance improved
substantially, with only 18% of reps in
regulated industries answering
incorrectly on their second try, and 28%
in unregulated industries.
Conclusions
Transforming the middle begins with the
acknowledgement that sales reps are
people. They possess ingrained
behavior, and changing that behavior
cannot be achieved through traditional
methods alone.
The key to success is two-fold:
• Understanding, with data-driven
insight, where individuals are today
(what they know and don’t know and
their strengths and weaknesses), and
• Executing a program that embraces
the three key elements to success at
scale: simplicity, convenience, and
motivation.
Most managers would also agree that
few productivity investments come close
to coaching for improving performance
of the “middle”. But coaching the right
people, and understanding how to drive
the right behavior for long-term success
is critical to driving sustainable business
results.
Recall that even a 5% performance
improvement in the middle can yield, on
average, over 70% more revenue.
Clearly the size of the prize is worth
looking after. The dependence on
lagging indicators such as quota
attainment, however, is not enough. For
most, the ability to assess leading
indicators, such as real-time
measurement of sales readiness through
ongoing mobile reinforcement is
unprecedented. And, it’s here today.
How Do You Manage and
Measure the Strengths of
Your Team?
Think beyond your once-or-twice-a-year
sales meeting for compelling
opportunities to truly impact the
performance of the middle,
including:
• Product lifecycle milestones
• New hire training/onboarding
• Competitive threat management
• Key market, regulatory or
legislative developments that
impact your company or
customers
• Mergers & acquisitions
• Changes in sales leadership,
business process or sales
methodology
• Quarterly business updates
Sources:
1.
“Shifting the Performance Curve,” Sales Executive Council
2.-4.
Savo Group/Sirius Decisions Sales Enablement Study, 2014
5.
SMA,“Management’s Sales Coaching Impact,” May 2014

10. | 10
About Qstream
Based on research originally
conducted at Harvard Medical
School, Qstream challenges are
presented repeatedly over spaced
intervals of time until content is
mastered. Reps can complete their
challenges in just minutes a day,
providing managers with real-time
insight into their team’s
capabilities, and allowing them to
intervene quickly to improve
effectiveness, and provide targeted
coaching.
Today Qstream’s SaaS solution is
used by six of the world’s top 10
pharmaceutical companies, and by
industry leaders such as Oracle,
Charles Schwab and SunGard, as
well as a growing network of solution
providers who deploy Qstream-powered
programs to transform their
clients’ sales teams. To learn more,
visit Qstream.com, follow
@Qstream on Twitter, or like us at
facebook.com/Qstream.
Qstream is a mobile sales force
enablement platform that helps
reinforce key market, product and
competitive messages by engaging
employees in a series of fun, Q&A-based
sales challenges, delivered
directly to their mobile device.

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All rights reserved.