Time consuming but accurate is assessment based on observation. First, you need to define the selling role and develop the list of skills that you want to observe. These should be weighted by importance since not all skills contribute equally to the success of the role. Next, train your observers to avoid falling into the trap of only looking for evidence that supports a view they already have of the sales person. Schedule sales meetings or role-plays where you observe. Try to screen out the effect on the assessment of the subject knowing they are being observed. Finally, decide on a benchmark that defines what good looks like. This approach means spending a lot of time upfront in preparation and is costly for the sales manager who has to observe the sales person at meetings. The result can be robust and objective but does not yield much better information than using the right online assessment and takes hours in the making and hours in the doing. Two and a half hours seems quite short in comparison.

 What if you want to test for a future role? Consider a sales person who wanted advancement to a sales manager role. He was very good in his sales role and if his employer hadn’t been willing to promote him he would probably have gone elsewhere. (Of course, if he had been put in the wrong role they would have lost him anyway.) An assessment centre would have helped, but for a single individual it was inappropriate. However, using an online assessment he was tested in the sales manager role and also in a new senior selling role. The tests revealed that he had potential as a sales manager and would probably be adequate in the role, but in the senior selling role he could excel. The boss didn’t have to persuade him to make the right choice – he himself elected to step up to the senior sales role. The boss was able to provide a focused development plan built around behaviours and competence that enabled the individual to fulfil their promise of excellent results and the whole process took 4 hours including feedback time.

 So it seems in trying to improve your sales results you can either trust to a horoscope and hope approach, develop a full assessment centre or spend 2 ½ hours online with an assessment that is robust, objective, immediate and above all accessible by the sales person and the sales manager.

We have all at various times had good, poor and average members of our teams.  It is easy to know what to do with the first two groups; the challenge has always been to manage and develop the average performers so that they improve.  This is the group that can be the difference,  that can take you over the numbers.  They will have the biggest impact on the bottom line.  So the question has always been what would unlock that potential and make them have an impact? I come back to the carrot and the stick.

As the Directors and Managers of sales teams, the temptation is to react in a one-dimensional way when we really know we need to use all the tools at our disposal to drive revenue.

In today’s market it is even more important to find the way to have every member of the team make that impact.  A 10% – 15% improvement will go straight to the bottom line.  However, even if we think we found ways of making that impact in the past, are we sure it will work now?

Customers’ expectations are changing and we must change to meet them.

Customers are no longer interested in the pain game.  They don’t have time to tell us about their business and its challenges. 

They expect us to know what drives them, to understand their market and to offer them solutions that will positively impact their bottom line.  More and more, customers expect the sales person to know their business, to have done the research and to be proactive in using that knowledge to their advantage. 

To any sales person in 2009, knowledge truly is KING.

Knowledge of your customers’ market, of your customers’ customer and the options and solutions you can offer that will positively impact your customers’ bottom line.Customers face the same challenges that we do. They are looking for value, just as their customers are looking for value from them and if that is what they want, we as sales people must respond to their demands if we expect them to do business with us.

In order to meet these demands and have an impact we must be able to open that door to the customer so that they will listen.

To do that sales people need to be able to pitch three things to get that audience:

• Does it meet the CEO’s “keeps me up at night” threshold? If it does, does this problem seriously jeopardize the organization’s ability to compete?
• Is it being ignored, neglected, or ineffectively addressed by existing processes, systems, or services?
• Are you a credible source of advice on the issue? Is your organization’s track record better than your competitors’ when it comes to helping others in the customer’s industry solve related problems? Or, if your company is a start-up, do you have employees with prior experience doing this?

If you have done your research and have the knowledge and can confidently pitch how you manage these key criteria, congratulations, you are on the way to making a sale.

Isn’t it funny how different business leaders react differently to the current world economic situation. Sure, business overall is down and sure, there needs to be some right sizing as a result – but there is no reason for businesses to ‘batten down the hatches’ and prepare for a long siege – better than 90% of business is still operating as before!

So what’s really changed since the ‘credit crunch’?

There has been a (not unexpected) knee jerk cost cutting and job culling exercise across virtually all sectors. Maybe not a bad thing considering how inefficient many business were – sometimes a crisis brings the excesses into focus.

There has also been a knee jerk reaction from the bankrupt banks to stop lines of credit, causing misery for business and consumer alike – again, maybe not a bad thing considering how frivolously many people previously viewed credit.

The housing market has stalled – maybe again not a bad thing considering that prices were spiralling globally, putting ‘a place of my own’ beyond the reach of mere mortals.

Global interest rates have reached rock bottom – again, maybe not a bad thing when the banks massive and often obscene profiteering of the last years is taken into account.

But these are now over and done with. Backed with government money, banks are now literally throwing offers of credit out to businesses like confetti. In the UK, for example, house prices have reached such low price ebb and interest rates make saving not worth having. As a result, investors are piling into the market resulting in 1.6% increase in house prices in January 2009 alone. Interest rates are now so low that they alone can no longer make any difference to the ultimate outcome.

At this point in the economic cycle, businesses can go one of two ways:

The conservative approach – here companies husband their ever dwindling resources waiting for the day when the world ‘returns to normal’. The bad news for these people is – the world is forever changed.

The new world approach – here companies, recognising that this change is forever, invest in the new tools and skills that enable them to address the new needs of their (often new) customers.

The real challenge is simple today – have you recognised that this economic crisis has changed business for ever – or – are you waiting and hoping for the glory days to return?

For businesses now focussed on creating the change, start with the people that really matter – the sales force – your future wealth creators. As long ago as 2000 McKinsey said the difference between an average performer and a top performer was 67% revenue! Businesses that will be successful are those that only employ top performers. Ensure you are one of those successful businesses in the brave new world post the ‘credit crunch’.