Course 15A · Lesson 8 of 12
Sales performance research and academy design
| Work | Grade | Verdict | What we take |
|---|---|---|---|
| Drivers of Sales Performance (Verbeke and others, 2011) | Strong | Safe | Knowledge first; practise adaptiveness; remove role ambiguity |
| Adaptive selling and customer orientation (Franke, Park, 2006) | Strong | Safe | Customer orientation alone does not lift objective results |
| Adaptive selling review (2025) | Strong | Safe | Adaptiveness usually helps, not always |
| Korn Ferry and CSO Insights process research (2012 to 2025) | Vendor data; Mixed | Caveat | Adopting one method matters more than which method |
| Gartner buyer and seller research (2023 to 2026) | Mixed | Safe | Buyers prefer rep-free buying; overwhelmed sellers miss quota |
| AE benchmarks (Bridge Group, 2026) | Mixed | Safe | Realistic ramp and quota expectations |
| Sales efficiency benchmarks (Ebsta, Pavilion, 2025) | Vendor data; Mixed | Safe | Slipping deals kill win rates |
| Deep Sales (LinkedIn) | Vendor data; Mixed | Caveat | Buyers follow sellers between firms; track champions who move |
| How Much Do People Forget? (Thalheimer, 2010) | Strong | Safe | Retrieval practice; ban "84% forgotten" |
| Distributed practice meta-analysis (Cepeda and others, 2006) | Strong | Safe | Spaced refresher quizzes and recertification |
| Certification patterns (Trailhead, HubSpot Academy, Semrush, Google) | Weak to mixed | Safe (as design patterns) | Structure; shareable badges; certification gates |
| AI role-play results (Second Nature and others, 2024 to 2026) | Vendor data; Weak | Caveat | Cheap practice gates; measure your own effect |
| AI agents buyer survey (G2, 2025) | Vendor data; Mixed | Caveat | Autonomy with guardrails as Holly's headline |
| Services: the new software (Sequoia) | Weak | Caveat | "Holly does the work; you keep the judgement" |
Three works were used only as critiques, not reviewed as books: Barrett's Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (the "lizard brain" critique), Eyal's Indistractable, and Zaltman's How Customers Think (the unsupported "95% unconscious" claim).
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