Research Blog

What Sales Competency Data Reveals About Organizational Health 

AI Summary 

Most organizations treat sales competency development as a revenue function. Objective Management Group data from 9,630 salesperson evaluations in 2025 suggests it is something larger. Only 16% of salespeople have supportive beliefs, only 17% demonstrate strong qualifying skills, and only 17% are strong in consultative selling¹ — competencies that predict not just sales performance, but how effectively someone communicates, influences, and executes across an entire organization. When the majority of a sales team struggles to ask good questions, reach decision makers, or stay emotionally present in a difficult conversation, those deficiencies do not stay on the sales floor. They show up in cross-functional meetings, leadership conversations, internal negotiations, and organizational culture. The data points to a reframe worth considering: sales competency development is one of the most underleveraged organizational health strategies available. 

A Revenue Problem or an Organizational One? 

Ask most executives why they invest in sales development and the answer is immediate: to close more deals, hit quota, grow revenue. That answer is correct, but also incomplete. 

The capabilities that make a salesperson effective, like asking sharp questions, staying composed under pressure, influencing without authority, qualifying whether an opportunity is real, and having honest conversations about value and money, are not capabilities that stay neatly inside a sales role. They transfer. And in most organizations, they are underdeveloped well beyond the sales floor. 

Lepaya’s State of Skills 2025 report found a 178% increase in sales training hours among 194 industry-leading companies from 2023 to 2024, a signal that organizations are beginning to recognize something beyond quota attainment is at stake.² Gartner research found that the likelihood of strong commercial growth increases with sales and marketing alignment, and that chief sales officers must overcome a siloed mindset to drive a unified commercial strategy.³ The organizations investing most aggressively in sales capability are not just chasing revenue. They are building something that ripples across functions. 

Objective Management Group assessment data from 9,630 salespeople evaluated in 2025 provides a detailed picture of where the gaps actually are, and why they matter beyond the sales conversation. 

What the Data Actually Shows 

The OMG data spans three domains: Will to Sell, the motivational and mindset competencies that drive effort and persistence; Sales DNA, the underlying beliefs and emotional patterns that either enable or limit performance; and Tactical Skills, the execution competencies that show up in actual selling behaviors. 

Across all three, the same pattern emerges. Motivation is relatively strong. Execution capability and the beliefs that support it are not. 

What stands out is not just the low scores in tactical execution. It is the relationship between Sales DNA deficiencies and the tactical gaps they produce. 

Will to Sell: The Motivational Foundation 

The Will to Sell numbers are, on the surface, encouraging. 85% of salespeople demonstrate strong Desire and 77% show strong Motivation. Most salespeople want to succeed. 

But desire and motivation do not automatically translate into consistent action. Only 55% demonstrate strong Commitment, meaning nearly half are not reliably doing what success requires when conditions get difficult. Only 58% demonstrate strong Responsibility, meaning roughly four in ten salespeople are not consistently taking ownership of their own outcomes.  

For a VP of Sales, this is a coaching challenge. For an organization, it is something broader. A workforce where 42% of people struggle with personal accountability and nearly half disengage from difficult commitments is a culture signal, not just a sales performance problem. Accountability, follow-through, and commitment to outcomes show up in every function. Their presence or absence shapes how an organization executes against any priority, whether it has anything to do with sales or not. 

Sales DNA: The Hidden Performance Limiters 

Sales DNA is where the data becomes most instructive, and most frequently misread. 

Sales DNA captures the beliefs, emotional patterns, and behavioral tendencies that either enable or undermine performance. Unlike tactical skills, which can be trained directly, Sales DNA issues are harder to address because they are often invisible to the salesperson experiencing them. 

The numbers are striking. Only 16% of salespeople have supportive beliefs, meaning 84% carry beliefs about selling, buyers, or themselves that actively limit their performance. Only 19% have a supportive buy cycle, meaning most salespeople’s own experiences as buyers are distorting how they sell. Only 37% are strong in not needing approval, and only 38% demonstrate strong emotional control, the ability to stay present, composed, and effective when conversations get tense. 

Consider what these patterns look like outside a sales call. A manager who needs approval is reluctant to give direct feedback. A leader who struggles with emotional control derails important meetings when challenged. A team member with unsupportive beliefs about their own capabilities avoids the high-stakes conversations that would most benefit the organization. An employee who mirrors the buy cycle may defer too easily in internal negotiations, conceding ground they did not need to concede. 

Sales DNA deficiencies do not stay in client conversations. They operate in every interaction where stakes, pressure, or persuasion are involved, and that covers a significant portion of organizational life. 

Tactical Skills: Where the Gaps Compound 

The tactical skills data completes the picture, and it confirms that the capability gaps are both wide and consequential. 

Only 17% of salespeople are strong in qualifying, the ability to ask the right questions, assess fit honestly, and determine whether an opportunity is worth pursuing. Only 17% demonstrate strong consultative selling, meaning the vast majority are not effectively discovering needs before positioning solutions. Only 25% are strong in reaching decision makers, and only 21% demonstrate strong closing ability. 

These are worth pausing on. Qualifying, asking good questions, and reaching the right people are skills that apply far beyond a sales conversation. They describe how someone navigates complexity, earns access to decision-making conversations, and moves things forward inside an organization just as readily as outside of it. A product manager who cannot qualify which feedback actually matters. A finance leader who struggles to reach the right executive sponsor. A cross-functional lead who cannot consultatively build buy-in. The skills are the same; only the context changes. 

Industry research finds that 90% of business executives acknowledge significant skill gaps in their sales and marketing teams, with 85% expecting those gaps to widen within three years.⁴ The OMG data suggests the roots of those gaps are often deeper than the tactical training organizations typically invest in to address them. 

Two additional data points are worth noting. Only 34% of salespeople are strong in selling value, and only 16% are proficient in sales technology, the tools their organizations have invested in to improve productivity. The ability to articulate value and leverage available tools are basic requirements for organizational effectiveness, regardless of role. 

Sales Competency as an Organizational Diagnostic 

Most organizations treat sales assessment data as a tool for managing the sales team. It informs hiring decisions, coaching priorities, and individual development plans. That is the right use of it. It is also a narrow one. 

When only 16% of a sales team has supportive beliefs, that is a data point about organizational culture. When only 38% can regulate their emotions in difficult moments, that speaks to how conflict, pressure, and change are being managed across the team. When only 17% can qualify effectively, it raises a question about how rigorously the organization as a whole is testing assumptions, challenging its own thinking, and distinguishing real opportunities from wishful ones. 

Gartner has noted that chief sales officers who act as the voice of the market and lead holistic strategic planning create unified commercial strategies that boost customer engagement.³ Building that kind of alignment requires exactly the internal influence and cross-functional capability the OMG data suggests is missing in most organizations. Sales competency data, read with this lens, becomes an organizational diagnostic rather than just a management tool. 

The data also has implications for talent development beyond the sales function. The competencies that drive strong sales performance, asking better questions, managing emotional reactions, following through on commitments, reaching the right people, having honest conversations about value, are leadership competencies. They are communication competencies. They determine whether someone advances, whether a team executes, and whether an organization adapts. 

What Organizations Can Do Differently 

The organizations making the most of sales competency data are using it to understand their organization, not just score their salespeople. 

Practically, that means treating Sales DNA as a development priority rather than a fixed characteristic. Supportive beliefs, emotional control, and independence from approval are developable, but only when leaders understand where their people currently are and build development plans that address the root cause rather than the surface behavior. Generic sales training that addresses tactical execution without touching the underlying belief patterns tends to produce short-term improvement and long-term reversion.  

It also means expanding the conversation about who benefits from sales competency development. Consultative skills, qualifying discipline, and the ability to reach and influence decision makers are relevant for anyone whose role involves persuasion, collaboration, or navigating complexity. Research on cross-functional collaboration points to the value of developing what some describe as “T-shaped” professionals, people who combine deep functional expertise with the ability to work effectively across other parts of the organization, and notes that this kind of development increases engagement and leadership readiness.⁵ Sales competency development, applied at the organizational level, builds exactly those qualities. 

Finally, the data points to a measurement gap. Most organizations track sales performance outcomes: pipeline, win rate, quota attainment. Fewer track the competency-level indicators that predict those outcomes before they show up in the numbers. When only 23% of salespeople demonstrate strong sales process execution, pipeline and conversion problems are inevitable downstream. Measuring upstream allows organizations to intervene earlier, develop more deliberately, and move away from the reactive cycle of managing outcomes that could have been addressed at the capability level. 

Final Thoughts 

The 2025 OMG data is a snapshot of where salespeople stand. It is also a window into what is actually limiting organizational performance. 

The competency gaps revealed here, in beliefs, emotional control, qualifying, consultative selling, and commitment, are not problems that resolve with quota pressure or a new training program. They are deep, they are widespread, and they do not stay contained to customer interactions. 

Organizations that treat sales competency development as a revenue function alone are leaving a significant portion of its value untapped. The same data that reveals why a salesperson is struggling to close also reveals why a team is struggling to align, why a culture is struggling to hold accountability, and why an organization is struggling to build the internal influence that drives durable growth. The skills gap hiding in plain sight was never just a sales problem. 

References 

1. Objective Management Group. Finding Statistics Tool. Score of those strong in 21 Core Sales Competencies. 1/1/2025-12/31/2025.  
2. Lepaya. “The State of Skills 2025.” Lepaya, 2025. https://www.lepaya.com/blog/the-2025-sales-training-boom-a-bold-strategy-for-growth 
3. Gartner. “Three Trends Chief Sales Officers Must Consider in 2025.” Gartner, December 2024. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-12-09-three-trends-chief-sales-officers-must-consider-in-2025 
4. Martal. “Mastering the Sales Competency Model: A Blueprint for High-Growth Teams in 2025.” Martal, August 2025. https://martal.ca/sales-competency-model-lb/
5. ITD World. “Cross-Functional Collaboration: Guide to Silo Busting in Large Organizations.” ITD World, April 2026. https://itdworld.com/blog/human-resources/cross-functional-collaboration/