HOW DO YOU ENHANCE THE CAPABILITIES OF YOUR SALES FORCE?

Any organisation’s sales force represents a key element in business success. As Tom Watson, Founder of IBM, said: “Nothing happens until a sale is made”. Even the most innovative products can fail if these offerings are not presented to the right audience in the most compelling manner. If no sales are made, no revenue is generated. Therefore, it is critical to appoint the right people with the right skills and competencies to your sales force.

WHAT IS THE COST OF A BAD APPOINTMENT?

Appointing the wrong person in a job can be expensive for a company to rectify and especially so when this appointment is made in the sales force. If a salesperson is appointed, but that person does not possess the core competencies required for successful job execution, valuable time and money would have been spent on the development of that individual, with no guarantees that the person would be successful in a sales role. The greater risk lies in the possible damage to vitally important customer relationships.

For example, if a sales person does not have good verbal communication skills, he or she will be disadvantaged when applying selling skills. Over and above the cost of training and developing this salesperson, there are a number of other costs involved in making the wrong appointment, such as the cost of poor performance and missed sales targets, the cost of recruiting a replacement and even a potentially negative impact on the morale and productivity of colleagues.

HOW DOES ASSESSMENT HELP TO MITIGATE THE RISK?

Assessment assists HR professionals and managers in the recruitment and selection process by providing additional candidate information to aid in the identification of genuine sales talent and in determining “best fit” candidates. When assessments are conducted with existing incumbents, self-awareness of development areas is created and development interventions can be directed towards addressing these areas. Personal development plans can be generated from these assessments and can be incorporated in the organisation’s performance management as well as coaching processes. It also provides a valuable measure of competence prior to training and assists in determining the impact of training interventions on the competency levels of individuals.

The following benefits can be achieved through competency-based assessment:

1. Assessment of an individual's past behaviour can provide valuable information for the prediction of future behaviour

2. The core competencies measured during assessment are related to successful job execution
3. Objectivity of evaluation is ensured through the utilisation of trained assessors and the incorporation of psychological assessment

SO, HOW WELL DOES ASSESSMENT PREDICT JOB SUCCESS?

There are various selection methods and procedures available, each of which increases the level of accuracy of employment decisions and the prediction of job success. To understand how well assessments predict job success, we must consider the term called predictive validity. Predictive validity refers to the extent to which an assessment measure can predict job performance relating to the key success criteria identified for a specific role.

Relationships between assessment outcomes and future performance are expressed as correlation coefficients (r), where r = 1 represents a perfect relationship, thus the assessment is a perfect predictor of job success and r = 0 signifies that no relationship whatsoever exists. The graph below provides an indication of how well some of the various selection methods correlate with job success.

Predictive validity can be increased through the combination of various selection techniques, for example: Let’s take General Mental Ability tests, which show the highest predictive validity rating. When used in combination with structured competency-based interviews the predictive validity can be increased by up to 27% and when combined with work-sample tests by around 24%.

Based on this realisation, BIT always combines techniques when conducting assessments in an attempt to increase predictive validity and allow for improved decision-making.

WHY IS BIT ASSESSMENT DIFFERENT?

BIT provides sales focused assessments at four different levels of sales, namely Transactional, Consultative, Strategic and Managerial. Each level requires that the salesperson possesses specific core competencies to enhance effectiveness in that role. BIT assessments focus on the core competencies identified for success in each level and feedback on results is given not in general, but is reported specifically in terms of the identified core competencies.

BIT follows an assessment battery approach where a number of assessment techniques are incorporated to provide a clearer picture of the participant and a more reliable result than with for instance a single assessment. The types of assessment techniques incorporated in BIT assessment batteries include, among others, sales call simulations and role-plays, in-basket exercises, structured competency-based interviews and psychometric tests and questionnaires.

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