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Historically, executives have been split about the answer, but that’s starting to shift. According to Proudfoot Consulting’s 2006 Proudfoot Productivity Report, 63 percent of executives polled now believe that a good salesperson is made. And that conviction puts some real pressure on the shoulders of sales managers, who have first-line responsibility for making great sales reps.

If you’re not among the 63 percent who believe good salespeople are made, it may be because you aren’t giving enough attention to the three things that build a rep’s performance: training, coaching, and a defined sales process with metrics and standards. Don Hammalian, head of sales effectiveness practice at Proudfoot (and a confirmed member of the 63 percent club) says the biggest gap he finds, and finds consistently, is in coaching. How big is the gap? In roughly 85 percent of the companies with which Proudfoot works, sales managers are spending just 2 to 3 percent of their time coaching. Furthermore, company leaders are unaware of the gap. CEOs assure Hammalian all the time that their reps are “absolutely being coached by their managers,” but when Hammalian asks the reps whether they are coached, he usually gets a blank stare.

One of the key implications of the born-versus-made question is that managers need to spend more time coaching their people. While there’s no magic formula, Hammalian says he advocates devoting one full day a month to coaching each rep. That means if you have 10 reps, you should be spending 50 percent of your time coaching, assuming a 20-day work month. Think that’s a lot? Hammalian once met a district sales manager who bragged that he was the best manager; that no one in the company came close to the results he and his team achieved. A skeptical Hammalian asked the manager what set him apart and why he thought he was so much better than his peers. The manager’s answer: he spends 75 percent of his time coaching his people and as a result their performance is unmatched.

Still, coaching is just one piece of the puzzle when you buy into the view that good salespeople are made. Another piece is training, and Hammalian says the born-versus-made question puts the spotlight on the need for good, consistent, and reinforced training. The third piece is having a sales process and a management operating system (MOS) in place to measure progress. An MOS, explains Hammalian, is a combination of reports, controls, metrics, and standards that support the sales process. It’s a system that measures key performance ratios such as the number of phone calls you need to make to get a prospect, the number of appointments you need to get a presentation, the number of presentations you need to make to close a sale, and so on. “It’s about converting a company’s goal into numbers, then measuring progress along the way,” says Hammalian.

Three-quarters of companies don’t do a good job of managing in this proactive way. They get close to the end of the quarter, realize they’re 10 percent behind their goal and urge everyone to “get moving!” Instead, Hammalian says that if your goal is $100 million in revenues this year, you should know from your MOS that you’ll need, say, $500 million in your funnel, then you need to manage that funnel and manage your people on a daily and weekly basis so that activity targets are reached.

When you combine this kind of management of targeted activity with consistent coaching and regular training, you’ll see – as Hammalian has with his clients – revenue improvements of up to 40 percent in a year. And you’ll soon find yourself siding with the 63 percent of executives who believe good salespeople are made.

For a complete copy of the Proudfoot Productivity Study, visit www.proudfootconsulting.com.

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