Sales Force Testing & Evaluation

A Properly Engineered Sales Force

Capital equipment and industrial sales have used a simple model: field salespeople reporting to sales managers who processed their call reports and expenses and submitted forecasts.

Today sales organizations are more complex. Sales Managers report to VPs of sales. Inside sales may report to a different set of managers. BDRs (business development reps) may report to marketing. And marketing, while not strictly sales, has to create campaigns that will sell virtually and in parallel with their colleagues.

At the same time, buying teams and buying journeys are more complex, and new sales skills are necessary to deliver results.

That requires more than behavioral preference or personality testing. Sure, you want a collegial team. But more importantly, you want one that is proficient in each of the distinct functions.

Sales force testing should account for each unique revenue role, evaluate accordingly, and aggregate them into an actionable management overview.

Recruiting is a Neverending Process

Things change. 

• Market conditions
• Skills required
• Motivation and energy level
• Your products and revenue model
• Company needs and expectations
• Sometimes a salesperson's family obligations uproot and move them
• Sadly, serious illnesses and accidents can strike suddenly

In a perfect world, you'd hire top talent for a lifetime and they'd perform year after year. In the real world you need to continuously look for top talent. If you wait to recruit until you have a gap, you've accepted lengthy periods of non-performance from a territory.

The reason companies don't do this is simple. Hiring sales roles is a crap shoot. (That's what happens when you screen for personality!)

The solution is to constantly recruit and assess, allowing proven technology to churn through large volumes of applicants to find the very rare diamonds.

That's what we do with Sales Candidate Assessments.

Measure Sales People on Skills and Attributes

While all your employees must comply with your company's ethical, moral, and cultural expectations, they don't have to be friends. Collegial and supportive personalities are great, but you're not hiring sales talent to for friendship.

Sales success can be successfully predicted by data, when the methodology considers certain attributes of the company, market and products.

But make no mistake - evaluating your current team and prospective candidates requires a dispassionate foundation of data and science. 

That delivers results:

• 92% of recommended and hired candidates reached to top half of the sales force within six months
• 75% of candidates that were not recommended, but hired anyway, failed within six months

Many companies use personality and behavioral tests to supplement data-based sales force testing. That's sensible.

Just make sure that your testing methodology is based on a sound technical manual and proven reliability.

Insights and Data to Help You Manage

Today's complex sales environment requires that you have both the high-level management perspective to optimize the revenue growth function and specific details on the strengths and weaknesses of each leader, manager, and contributor.

So our model delivers.

You'll receive insights into each role (e.g. how effective and consistent are your VPs at coaching sales managers, and how effective are your reps at overcoming objections) and detailed information on each person in their role.

This combination provides the information you need to improve team performance, tailor group and individual training maximize impact, and make informed personnel decisions based on factors that contribute to consistent quota attainment.

You'll also have metrics on your recruiting results to help optimize all aspects of that effort.