Yet another critical reason companies have problems with 80/20 performance is that their processes for hiring, teaching, and managing salespeople rely almost entirely upon opinion-based information. Guide on online sales assessment.
Think about it:
- What are resumes? They are an individual’s subjective portrayal of their capabilities and experience.
- What occurs during a job interview? Interviewees attempt to package their responses to questions in a fashion that will make the best impression. In the meantime, interviewers are forming personalized opinions about candidates’ certifications for the position.
I’m not necessarily suggesting that subjective data is useless. On the contrary, subjective data is a valid and essential component of any “people decision.” However, if decisions structured solely upon subjective data produce an undesirable result 80% of the time, doesn’t it seem sensible to consider making a change?
One method to introduce objective information into sales recruiting is through specialized sales evaluation tests. I do not concern with personality or behavioral assessments like Myers-Briggs or DISK. Those tools work well for learning how to communicate more effectively with someone. However, I have not found them to help predict whether someone will undoubtedly succeed in sales.
The specific sales assessment tests which I’m referring to identify a person’s strengths or weaknesses within the following areas:
- How quickly does the individual learn brand-new information? This talent is critical if your company has a broad collection of products and services and wants your salespeople to market the entire portfolio.
- How exactly and effectively does the person communicate verbally and in writing? For example, if your salespeople write a lot of proposals and e-mails, the quality of their writing will undoubtedly impact their overall sales performance!
- How strong is the person’s talent for asking informative questions, picking out essential information from the answers, and taking advantage of this information to construct additional queries? This talent is critical for practical sales opportunity certification.
- How strong is the person’s talent for learning how to handle effective return on investment (ROI) discussions with prospects and clients? This talent is critical for increasing close rates by simply creating a context for price tag discussions.
- How energetic could the individual be? How easy should it be for them to consistently maintain the higher level of productive activity required to obtain their sales targets?
- How effectively can the individual convince prospects and buyers to “get off the dime” and take action?
- How interpersonal is the individual? Do they delight in interacting with others? Do they construct rapport with strangers easily?
- Can the individual successfully one on one their activities, or does the individual require repeated input and direction from a sales manager to stay regular?
- How will the individual respond any time things don’t go their very own way? Will they commence to whine and complain, or maybe they will be able to “shake it off” and maintain an identical level of productivity?
- How good is the individual’s desire to be appreciated? Will they be able to keep a “win-win” focus, or maybe they will give away the shop?
- How competitive is the specific? How confident are they in their ability to compete successfully?
- Precisely how emotionally challenging is the person? How do they respond to being rejected?
- How dogged and decided is the individual going after opportunities and overcoming hurdles during the product sales process?
- Will the individual follow through on their commitments?
- How achievement-oriented and outcome concentrated is the individual? Are they able to remain focused on the desired result, or even do they let themselves obtain bogged down in information along the way?
- Does the individual ENJOY the activities involved in marketing? If they don’t, they will not perform very well for a lengthy.
Specialized sales assessment assessments can also help existing sales staff that are struggling. How? First, they can determine whether they should be in sales. If an individual doesn’t have the talents necessary for sales success, your organization may have other functions where their talents and interests could be applied to mutual benefit. If no such positions can be found, the kindest thing you can do is let them go. The reason why? Because it is no fun to keep struggling in a work that is a poor fit!
Subsequently, sales assessment testing can help identify each salesperson’s unique training needs. An example:
Two salespeople, Beth and Bill, work for a similar company. Beth is poor in Sales Drive, helping to makes her reluctant to ask for orders placed. Bill is weak through Emotional Toughness, which makes them sensitive to rejection and limits his prospecting efficiency. If Beth and Invoice go through the same sales knowledge training course, how much improvement throughout performance should their workplace expect to see?
The answer is very little or non-e. Why? Since Beth and Bill get completely different training needs that won’t be addressed by standard sales skills training.
Beth would benefit the most from attending an assertiveness teaching class. She also demands coaching to help her observe that failing to ask for orders neglects her customer’s valuable approaches to costly business problems.
The invoice needs to learn not to take sexual rejection personally. He could also benefit from teaching that teaches positive contemplating and other motivational techniques.
However, unless Beth’s and Bill’s unique training needs are generally identified and targeted teaching is supplied to address those particular needs, there isn’t much cause to expect their performance to enhance.
Conclusion
Many “80/20” product sales performance differences result from depending too heavily on very subjective information when hiring and managing salespeople. Adding goal information (gathered by specific sales assessment tests) to “people decision” processes may dramatically increase the proportion of top performers on your salesforce and improve the performance associated with existing sales team members.
Read also: 6 Reasons Why You Must Build Your Promoting Systems
