:: Words of sales test wisdom from those who know ::

 I had been working with the medium sized sales force. I had been working with them for about 2 months and had mixed feelings about their abilities. I had originally been brought in to hone their skills as consultative sellers and develop them as account managers. The sales people responded well to the training which is not suprising as many of them far from being consultative sellers or account managers were transactional sellers without much clue how to sell a service/product that could be of strategic importance to the companies that might buy it. Amongst the sales people there was a feeling that it was the fault of marketing that sales were so low and the offer wasn’t that good and..and.. some of this might have been true but it got to be a catalogue of excuses I am not saying this to make anyone feel bad it is what happened. The company had appointed a new Sales Director very experienced, very intelligent he asked me to meet with him. I was expecting to give a report on the training but instead the Sales Director opened up to me and said that the sales peole were not what he had been told to expect, instead of the brilliant startegic sellers he had expected he had inherited a bunch of largely transactional sellers in hats too big for them. He felt handicapped and I guess a little vulnerable. He wanted to know my assessment & recommendations.  I am never comfortable giving an assessment from watching people on a training course because how people act in the field may be quite different good or bad. Training courses are not assessment centres I could though give a report back on attitude and behaviour. The Sales Director was very concerned about reaching targets for the rest of the year but had no real way of knowing who was good at what nor could he replace anyone easily or even be sure they were the right person to change. If you have ever been in this situation then you will understand the dilemma. 3 months later after much frustration there was whole sale slaughter in the Sales department. The sales director did this as fairly as he could but all the time thinking “I didn’t sign on to be a hatchet man.”

Now roll backwards wouldn’t it have been great if that sales director had an objective profile of the sales people that show’d their behaviour, attitude and motivation plus how skilled they were and then instead of measuring that against internal benchmarks you did that against world class top performers you would know before you got into post who should stay who should go and who should be  developed. You would of course want to validate that against actual figures but instead of being told by someone who knows little or nothing about sales people or selling that you have a fantastic team you know what they are warts and all. Imagine if you did you could really hit the ground running knowing that the decisions you make about sales people are the right decisions.

Let us take the ideas of testing a stage further many sales people could also gain by having an annual MOT benchmarked against world class performers so they can have real input into their own development and be able to answer performance questions like ” I get the meeting why can’t I quite get the sale?” imagine being able to go to another employer equipped with a robust report that has rigorously tested your abilities. Imagine a transactional seller being able to identify the skills and attitude shortfalls they have should they wish to progress to Consultative selling and then seek ways to fill the gap and grow their career.

Enough imagining the tool is here right now and it is called Fit-4 and I am an unashamed advocate for it: robust, rigorous,online easy to use and the results packed with practical, easy to understand information. This is the link to yesterdays true story Fit-4 is also a great tool for helping you to selct the right person for the right sales role and saving money time and heartache on the way.

SDV Training with Sales assessment.com are specialists in helping companies improve their B2B sales. We do this by helping you select the right sales people for the right role, assessing existing sales people benchmarked against world class top performers and we design and deliver sales trainiing and coaching