The Sales Performance Suite

Using Assessments to Build Your Sales Team's Strength

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Several of our previous blogs have talked about identifying, interviewing, and using assessments to hire top performing sales reps for your sales team.

So let's say by now you've enacted those points, built a benchmark and have introduced assessments to your recruiting and hiring process. Further, you've brought aboard a strong "A Player" who's really making the numbers happen and is going to make plan before year-end in a territory where that's never occurred before.

Congratulations!!

Next, by capitalizing on your use of assessments, we'll move forward on how you can use them to strengthen your sales team beyond the hiring process. [Don't worry, if you haven't used assessments yet, you'll benefit from the discussion, too.]

How do you build strength? 

Seasoned sales managers and, yes, veteran coaches of every sport will tell you, "Observe, coach, observe, coach, observe, coach." You spend every available moment in the field observing your team and stressing the use of sales strategies and techniques to advance the sales cycle in pre-call and post-call coaching sessions.

The use of an assessment will give you a "heads up" on your coaching efforts by telling you what areas to focus on and what areas are of a lesser concern that can be set aside for now.

For example: The assessment data tells you your new "A Player" is very social. In sales, we know that's a good thing as we'd prefer having our prospects and customers relating to a personable, outgoing rep instead of a remote, indifferent one.

However, your rep's need for social interaction can stymie sales performance. If the rep takes too much time "making friends instead of sales," sales will suffer as the result of too many "howdy calls" instead of executing calls with a clear sales objective. There are also prospects and customers who'd rather stick to business and forgo rapport-building. Your rep needs to know the difference between the two and react and respond accordingly.

A properly structured assessment report will identify characteristics like these and provide you coaching steps to overcome them.

Who Moves Up and When?

Every sales manager knows that at some point in time, they'll get asked, "Who's your successor?" When you do, you'd better be prepared with an answer. That question comprises a big part of our job responsibilities and planning succession is a critical process to ensure the continued success and growth of your sales team.

When planning succession moves, you'll need insights into your candidates beyond the scope of their current assignment. Your assessment data will help you out here, too.

Many sales organizations have promoted their top performing sales reps to sales managers, based on the logic that the rep's performance can be duplicated and translated in the managerial role to their new subordinates. This approach has worked in some cases but, in others, it has not.

The challenge is that a sales manager's role takes on aspects which are opposed to the classic sales rep function. For one, there's an administrative reporting responsibility to assume that presents a struggle for many former reps to address.

There's also the issue of structure. Reps generally are autonomous and independent while a large part of a manager's job involves enforcing policy which can present a transitional challenge for the new sales manager.

As in the case of our coaching example, an assessment on a managerial candidate will tell you if the candidate is "cut out" for the managerial function. Your starting point - as in the case of indentifying our top performing sales reps - will be to establish a benchmark for your managerial position that your candidates can be measured against.

Then, your assessment report will tell who you who is up for the challenge and who needs more "polish." Again, you'll be spending time developing those who'll be likely candidates as opposed to those who're not.

If I can aid you in using assessments for building your sales team strengths and depth, please do contact me at precallpro.com. 

Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ggvic/