Strategy, Skills, and the Sales Vulture

I hate golf…

yet I play almost every Saturday

When moving to Florida, golf felt almost mandatory. It can seem like the state hands out a set of clubs with a driver’s license. A score in the low 90’s is respectable enough to hold one’s own, and the time with friends is part of the appeal. But even after years of playing, the game can still feel like a strange mix of recreation and frustration.

Then one Saturday while playing another frustrating round, something

happened that made me think how sales really works.

On the edge of a pond, a vulture and a juvenile alligator squared off over a dead fish. There was no compromise and no “win-win” ending waiting to happen. One of them was leaving with a meal, and the other was going hungry.

The vulture opened its wings and moved side to side, just enough to confuse the young gator. In that brief moment of hesitation, it darted in, grabbed the fish, and stepped back on land beyond the alligator’s comfort zone.

The vulture did not win because it was bigger or stronger. It won because it used better strategy and better tactics.

That is sales.

Sales rewards strategy

In business development, people often talk about relationships, trust, partnership, and win-win outcomes. Those things matter, but they can also blur a harder truth: in a competitive sale, one producer wins the business and the rest do not. In that sense, sales is not won by good intentions alone; it is won by positioning, judgment, and execution.

Research supports that view. McKinsey found that many B2B organizations still lack the capabilities required for modern growth, while teams that build strong sales capabilities materially outperform weaker peers on growth and execution. The firm’s work points to consultative selling, account planning, and data-driven insights as capabilities that can be built deliberately rather than left to chance. [cite:30]

Harvard Business School research also shows that top-performing sales managers and teams distinguish themselves through specific behaviors and coaching patterns, not vague charisma or raw effort alone. [cite:26]

In practice, that means the best sales organizations do not merely encourage activity; they train people to make better decisions throughout the sales process.

The real edge is learned

There is a persistent myth in sales that top producers are simply “naturals.” That idea is appealing, but the evidence points elsewhere. A growing body of research shows that sales performance is strongly influenced by specific, learnable skill sets.

A study examining the relationship between sales skills and salesperson performance found that interpersonal and selling-related skills had a meaningful relationship with results, reinforcing the idea that performance depends heavily on capabilities that can be developed over time.[cite:32] Research published in European Business Review on B2B service firms similarly emphasizes that identifiable sales performance skills can be measured and improved, which supports a more disciplined, teachable view of sales excellence.[cite:25]

That matters because it changes how producers should be developed. Instead of hoping experience alone will eventually create excellence, leaders can build the underlying competencies directly: opportunity selection, questioning, discovery, positioning, presentation, and process control.

Case study: stop chasing everything

Consider a producer who appears busy all the time but rarely converts enough of that effort into real revenue. The calendar is full, conversations are happening, and quotes are constantly going out. Yet the hit ratio remains low, service teams are exhausted, and pricing pressure shows up in almost every opportunity.

That pattern usually signals a strategy problem before it signals a work ethic problem. Rather than pursuing every available account, the producer needs a tighter target market, a clearer value story, and a qualification process that filters out low-probability business earlier.

This approach aligns with broader sales research. Structured sales processes help teams improve qualification discipline, focus on higher-value opportunities, and create more consistent execution across the pipeline.[cite:33] McKinsey’s research echoes that same point by highlighting the value of clear capability building around account planning and consultative selling.[cite:30]

When producers narrow their focus, lead with business problems instead of generic quoting offers, and require meaningful engagement from prospects, conversion tends to rise while wasted motion falls. The improvement is not magic. It is the direct result of applying strategy before activity.

Case study: out-prepare the competition

Consider a second example: a producer who repeatedly reaches the finalist stage on a meaningful account but loses year after year to the incumbent or a better-positioned competitor. Technical knowledge is solid. Rapport is fine. Pricing is competitive. Yet the business still does not move.

In cases like this, the issue is often not effort but depth of discovery and the ability to shape the buying decision. Winning producers tend to spend more time understanding the customer’s priorities, decision roles, business risks, and desired outcomes before they ever present a solution.

Research on salesperson behavior supports that approach. A peer-reviewed study found that customer-oriented selling and adaptive selling behavior both have positive effects on sales performance, indicating that the ability to adjust one’s approach to the situation is a major driver of success.[cite:27] Harvard Business Review has likewise reported that strong sales performers distinguish themselves in part by how they allocate time, interact with customers, and build internal and external networks that improve execution.[cite:29]

In practical terms, that means the best producers do not merely show up with a proposal. They lead with insight, frame the cost of staying the same, and present a path to a better future state. In competitive situations, that strategic framing is often what separates first place from “great job, maybe next year.”

Why training matters

If strategy and skills matter this much, then training cannot be reduced to motivation, inspiration, or occasional product updates. Effective training must change behavior in the field.

Research on sales training effectiveness supports that standard. Doctoral work on evaluating sales force training found that training can and should be assessed not only by whether participants liked it, but by whether they learned, changed behavior, and improved business results.[cite:31] In other words, training has value when it creates measurable changes in how salespeople execute.

That is the difference between information and transformation. Information tells a producer what good selling sounds like. Transformation gives that producer a repeatable process and the coached practice needed to use it under pressure.

Sales Strategy and skills together

Strategy without skill usually produces good intentions and poor execution. Skill without strategy creates talented people who stay busy but win inconsistently. The highest performers combine both.

The lesson from the pond is simple: the vulture won because it read the moment, used a tactic that fit the situation, and executed with precision. Sales works the same way. Better results usually go not to the loudest or busiest competitor, but to the one with the clearest strategy and the strongest ability to execute it.

That is why great sales development is never just about effort. It is about teaching producers how to think, how to adapt, and how to win.

Appendix

Research notes for this article

·         McKinsey’s research on next-generation B2B sales capabilities argues that organizations that deliberately build consultative, insight-driven, and account-planning capabilities outperform peers that rely on legacy selling models.[cite 30]https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/building-next-generation-b2b-sales-capabilities

·         Harvard Business School research on top-performing sales managers highlights that high performance is associated with distinct managerial and coaching behaviors rather than broad personality traits alone. [cite 26] https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=64066

·         Harvard Business Review reported that strong salespeople often separate themselves by how they spend time, connect across networks, and engage customers, suggesting that high performance reflects repeatable behavior patterns.[cite29] https://hbr.org/2015/07/what-makes-great-salespeople

·         Research on sales performance skills in B2B service firms shows that sales excellence can be broken into identifiable skill dimensions that leaders can monitor and improve.[cite:25]https://www.emerald.com/ebr/article/36/2/201/1217208/Salespeople-s-sales-performance-skills-in-B2B-of

·         A study on the relationship between sales skills and salesperson performance found that learned sales capabilities contribute materially to stronger outcomes.[cite:32]https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1668838_code1332876.pdf?abstractid=1668838&mirid=1

·         Peer-reviewed research on adaptive and customer-oriented selling found that adjusting one’s sales behavior to the situation improves performance outcomes.[cite:27]https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9774540/

·         Research on evaluating sales force training effectiveness supports the idea that training should be judged by behavior change and business impact, not just participant satisfaction.[cite:31]https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/businessadministration_etds/2/

·         Work on structured sales processes reinforces the value of qualification discipline, repeatability, and process control in improving win rates and execution consistency.[cite:33]https://digitalcommons.murraystate.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1387&context=bis437