Assessing Sales Skills and Development Needs
The Client
The global sales team of a major corporation.
Issues
This was a widely dispersed sales operation using several languages covering a global customer marketplace. It was a newly created group brought about by the merger of several teams and the integration of acquisitions. Management faced three challenges. First, because of recent changes in the sales structure, a significant number of the sales team are relatively new to their role. Second, the product offering had changed as the organisation acquired new businesses. Third, the emphasis going forward will be upon account growth and new business development.
The Aims
The overall aim of the project was to enhance sales skills. More specifically the client wanted to:
• To identify individual’s strengths and areas for further development
• To assess each salesperson’s “fit” in their role
• To develop individual learning plans
The Solution
The core of the assessment was founded on a set of 50+ Key Sales Behaviours that each sales role should be able to demonstrate. These behaviors reflect visible and measurable activities that can be assessed through observation and test. The behaviours were developed with managers and tested to ensure that they presented a full picture.
We agreed that the assessment should form part of a five day training programme. There were two parts to the assessment process: an examination designed to test product knowledge and a role play assessment. Steps we followed were:
Step 1: Define and Refine Key Sales Behaviours From a generic template we produce three versions of the behaviors; one for each of the roles.
Step 2: Self Assessment Each salesperson then completed a self assessment against these behaviours. This activity helped clarify training aims and introduce the concepts of sales behaviours and assessment.
Step 3: Brief Salespeople At the start of the process each salesperson was given a customer brief appropriate to their job, an explanation of the assessment procedure and a copy of the assessment document so that they could see the measures against which they were to be assessed. The brief outlined the basic information about a "client" and they were encouraged to research and prepare for a meeting scheduled for the end of the week.
Step 4: Conduct Role Play Assessment Each salesperson met two buyers from the client company. Meetings were recorded on video. After the meeting observers assessed the salesperson against the agreed behaviours. One week later assessors reviewed their assessment after watching the video.
Step 5: Examination To test product knowledge we devised a simple exam that took into account language differences but assessed learning during the week.
Follow up
Once assessments were completed and co moderated the results were distributed to sales managers. As a consequence each manager devised a learning plan with every member of their team.
