Driving Sales Performance: 4 Research Driven Best Practices
A few years back, a sales leader at a global tech firm had all the right assets — strong products, pricing, and prospects — yet results were inconsistent. What differentiated the high performers was not effort, but the practices driving sales performance. Some salespeople hit their numbers with confidence, while others struggled to gain traction.
The difference wasn’t in knowledge or effort. It came down to how they approached the role—what they emphasized, how they influenced customers, and how they managed opportunities.
This story is not unique. Across industries, organizations struggle to identify what differentiates top performers from the rest.
Traditional approaches often rely on anecdotal evidence, outdated competency models, or one-size-fits-all training programs. These approaches rarely offer actionable insight into the specific practices that drive measurable results, leaving leaders to guess. This best practices study provides evidence-based answers.
Using data from the Sales Performance Assessment™ (SPA), we analyzed a global sample of 340 sales professionals. This analysis relied on boss ratings from the 180-degree version of the tool to determine how sales professionals demonstrate effectiveness.
The findings reveal four practices that most consistently distinguish highly effective salespeople: Production, Persuasive, Management Focus, and Insight. Together, these four practices form a predictive framework for driving sales performance rather than relying on soft intuition or generic training. Let’s learn more about these four pillars that support sales effectiveness.
Production: Setting High Standards and Driving for Results
Production is defined in the SPA as a sales method. It focuses on setting high standards for success and aims for strong results. Individuals who score high here place strong emphasis on goals, benchmarks, and consistently meeting or exceeding them.
In practice: Consider a territory manager in medical devices who sets a personal quota above the official company target. Each week, they look at pipeline metrics and analyze conversion ratios. They see these measures as tools for ongoing improvement, not just reports.
When a hospital delays a big order, this salesperson quickly shifts time to other potential clients. This helps keep overall goals on track.
Why it matters: Production anchors the sales role in accountability. While relationship skills and market knowledge create opportunities, effectiveness ultimately depends on disciplined execution. High producers sustain momentum by balancing ambition with persistence, modeling the reliability that organizations and customers value.
Persuasive: Convincing and Negotiating in a Compelling Way
In the SPA, Persuasive measures the extent to which salespeople focus on convincing, persuading, and negotiating in a compelling way. High scorers spend time crafting clear, credible, and tailored arguments that move customers from interest to commitment.
In practice: Imagine a sales professional presenting a new platform to a mid-sized client. Instead of starting with a long list of features, they tell a strong story. This story shows how the client’s competitors are reducing onboarding times by half. They use storytelling in ways that simplify complex concepts and help them be more memorable, relatable, and trustworthy. They ask targeted questions to uncover pain points, then connect those concerns directly to the product’s benefits. They paint a picture for the client of what the future could look like with those pains solved. When people discuss the price, the conversation feels less like a negotiation. It feels more like a natural agreement based on shared goals and values.
Why it matters: In competitive markets, customers have access to a lot of information. Persuasion is not about pressure or too much information. Persuasive sellers know how to change their style for different buyers. They use logic, emotion, and trust in the right mix.
Management Focus: Organizing for Sales Success
The SPA defines Management Focus as the organizing part of the sales role. It means aligning priorities, coordinating efforts, and making sure activities lead to results. High scorers can balance their own work with guiding the sales process. This helps manage opportunities well from start to finish.
In practice: Imagine a senior account executive. She manages her own clients and helps her team with account planning and opportunity reviews. She coordinates efforts to pursue large opportunities, clarifies responsibilities, and ensures follow-through. Her ability to organize and align activities lifts both her performance and that of the group.
Why it matters: Management Focus ensures that sales professionals don’t just work hard but work smart. In complex sales environments, people with strong organizational focus improve performance. They avoid wasted effort and create more consistent, scalable results.
Insight: Reading People and Situations Accurately
Insight in the SPA measures how well you read people and situations. It also shows how you use this knowledge to understand customers’ needs and find opportunities. High scorers notice small hints, adjust to different personalities, and present solutions that connect with customers.
In practice: During a sales meeting, a representative notices a prospect’s hesitation when budget concerns come up. Instead of pushing harder, he asks a question that reveals a hidden issue in the client’s approval process. By tailoring his proposal to address that barrier, he builds trust and keeps the deal moving forward.
Why it matters: Insight strengthens customer relationships by demonstrating genuine understanding. In markets where buyers want personalized solutions, sellers with strong insight stand out. They become trusted advisors who can foresee problems before they slow down progress.
Implications for Building Sales Competencies
The combined strength of Production, Persuasive, Management Focus, and Insight highlights an important lesson for organizations: effective sales performance depends on multiple skills. The best sales professionals balance discipline in execution, interpersonal influence, organizational focus, and perceptive judgment.
For coaching and development, this suggests a four-part focus:
Building discipline around results to sustain pipelines, quotas, and conversion goals.
Establish clear frameworks and tracking systems that help teams develop internal habits of focus and accountability — sustaining high performance over time.
Sharpening influence skills so reps move deals forward confidently.
Use role-plays, storytelling techniques, and negotiation exercises to help teams experiment with their authentic style, reflect on impact, and build confidence in their ability to influence others.
Developing management focus ensuring time is invested where it accelerates sales performance.
Strengthen opportunity management, process alignment, prioritization, and delegation — while reinforcing the discipline to direct collective effort toward achieving results.
Enhancing perceptiveness so reps detect hidden client needs, preventing stalls in deals.
Encourage active listening, analysis of customer feedback, and reflection on interpersonal dynamics to deepen leaders’ ability to read people and situations with accuracy and empathy.
By aligning development strategies with these practices, organizations can cultivate sales competencies that deliver sustainable results. More importantly, this data-driven approach allows leaders to move beyond generic training or outdated competency models. Instead of spreading resources thin, organizations can target the specific practices that matter most for driving outcomes.
This is a shift in how many organizations approach salesforce development. Most organizations measure outcomes. Only 25% actually measure the practices that drive those outcomes. Others might implement new tools or processes, which are less likely to accelerate sales results than deliberate practice change.
This research not only provides empirical support for development of practices linked to sales effectiveness, but it provides a shortlist of practices that can truly increase sales effectiveness. Together, these practices form a blueprint for superior sales performance in today’s complex markets:
- For sales professionals, this creates opportunities to strengthen their credibility, differentiate themselves in crowded markets, and build more sustainable client relationships.
- For organizations, it provides a practical roadmap for selection, development, and long-term success.
Ultimately, organizations that rely on intuition or outdated models miss opportunities to optimize driving sales performance. By grounding development in these research-backed practices, you build an adaptable, high-performing sales force designed to hit targets reliably, not occasionally.
Maria Brown is Head of Research and Education with MRG. She can be found on LinkedIn.