- Are they a Hunter or a Farmer? Do they prefer to pursue new business, or do they prefer to manage existing customer relationships? Or, are they capable of performing both functions effectively?
- Are they Internally or Externally motivated? Internally motivated salespeople are capable of directing their own activities. Externally motivated salespeople require frequent direction and support from their manager in order to be consistently effective.
- How effectively will they Prospect? How aggressively (and consistently) will they pursue new opportunities?
- How willing are they to comply with Administrative Requirements? This may include updating records in your company's customer relationship management (CRM) system and providing timely and accurate forecasts and opportunity pipeline updates.
- Will they be a good Team Member? Will they work cooperatively with their fellow sales team members, as well as other departments?
How can specialized sales assessment tests help existing salespeople who are struggling?
They can help in two specific ways. First, they can determine which salespeople should be in sales. If an individual doesn't have the talents required for success in your company's sales job, there may be other roles in your organization where their talents and interests can be applied to mutual benefit. If there aren't any such positions available, the kindest thing you can do is to let them go.
How can firing someone be kind? Because it is NO fun to struggle in a job that is a poor fit. If you share the assessment test results with these individuals, they can gain insights into their strongest talents and interests. The sooner they can migrate into roles that are compatible with their talents and interests, the sooner they will reap the benefits of improved productivity, motivation, and job satisfaction.
The second way these assessment tests can help struggling salespeople is by identifying their unique training needs. If you identify each salesperson's individual training needs, and you supply targeted training to address these needs, you can dramatically improve their performance. Here's an example:
Two fictitious salespeople, Beth and Bill, work for the same company. Beth is weak in Sales Drive, which makes her reluctant to ask for orders. Bill is weak in Emotional Toughness, which makes him sensitive to rejection and limits his prospecting effectiveness. If Beth and Bill go through the same sales skills training course, how much improvement in sales performance should they expect to see?
The answer is little or none. Why? Because Beth and Bill have completely different training needs that will not be addressed by basic sales skills training.
Beth would benefit most from attending an assertiveness training class. She also needs coaching to help her recognize that failing to ask for orders denies her customers valuable solutions to costly business problems.
Bill needs to learn to not take rejection personally. He might also benefit from attending a class that teaches positive thinking and other motivational techniques.
Unfortunately, unless these two salespeople are made aware of their unique training needs, and provided with targeted training to address them, there isn't much reason to expect their performance to improve.
Conclusion
Many companies struggle with "80/20" performance disparities in their sales organizations. These disparities usually result from an over-reliance on subjective information when making salesperson hiring and coaching decisions. The proposed solution is to add objective information gathered via specialized sales assessment tests to the "people decision" process. This one change can help companies increase the proportion of top performers on their sales teams and improve the performance of existing sales team members.
