Question: Has your Sales Organisation formally documented ‘role profiles’ that identify capabilities and competencies for all positions in your Sales Organisation – and does your current hiring process consistently match candidates to ‘role profiles’ to assess fit?
The Reality
According to our research at ThinkSales Global, only 45.7% of Sales Organisations have documented ‘role profiles’ that identify capabilities and competencies for all positions in the Sales Organisation.
In addition, 30.6% of companies rate their confidence as Outstanding that their current hiring process consistently matches candidates to ‘role profiles’ to assess fit.
The ‘Mismatch Between Person and Role’ Problem
Many Sales Organisations are adept in drawing up job specs and interview questions, but fail to complete in-depth Role Profiles. Consequently, they hire candidates who had good track records in their previous sales positions, and yet they fail to live up to expectations in their new company.
The result is lost revenue opportunities due to wasted costs on salary, time and lost sales.
Consider a mid-sized entrepreneurial business that hires star performers from a corporate or vice-versa. The skills required to operate in an agile organisation that relies on prospecting are different to the skills required to service large enterprise customers that are buying into a proven brand name.
If you take a corporate sales executive who predominantly services customers but doesn’t have to sell the brand because of the brand equity that already exists, and throw them into an environment where they have to prospect and educate customers, you could be setting them up for failure – simply because the job role doesn’t suit their talents.
Document job roles to match the right talent to positions
There’s more to selling than simply finding super-star sales people who excel in their current positions. You need to evaluate their skills, strengths, training and experience with your product or service.
Consider the following points:
- It may be that your sales coup was in hiring top performing sales execs from leading companies in your field. These sales execs were finalists in most deals, even if they’d never met anyone at a client company.
- Are these execs equipped to now introduce themselves to those same buyers who have never heard of your business? They might be excellent closers, but can they get their foot in the door? Are they any good at prospecting?
- How passionate are they about your product? Are they equipped to excite a company about the product offerings of a business that doesn’t represent the largest players in the market?
- They might have strong industry knowledge, but are they passionate? Passion plays a huge role in resilience.
There are a lot of things that can go wrong when you aren’t focused on finding the right person for your specific needs. It’s imperative that you therefore understand those needs, or you could end up hiring great sales people who just underperform in your business.
Do This:
1. Hire the right people for the right roles
Questions to ask when job role scoping include:
- Did you evaluate your selling environment and select people who have sold in similar selling environments?
- Do you have farmers in hunter roles, transactional sales types in solutions sales roles, channel reps in direct roles, or reps from big companies trying to master selling in a small company?
- Did you select reps that have the same personality traits and competencies as your perennial top performers?
- Are you matching the buying cycle lengths with the competencies of your sales executives and/or candidates?
2. Identify performance factors
Lee Salz, author of Hire Right, Higher Profits, recommends this 3-phased exercise that goes beyond skill to identify other factors for success:
- Role overview
- Selling landscape
- Specific sales role’s responsibilities for each of the various phases of the sales process
Assess the health of your sales organisation
Documenting ‘role profiles’ that identify capabilities and competencies and consistently matching candidates to those ‘role profiles’ to assess fit are two of 322 measures of a world-class Sales Organisation.
ThinkSales Global is a specialist revenue engineering consultancy.
We assist our clients to deliver market-defying results through strategic and tactical intentions within a Sales Organisation Maturity Model that addresses the five key pillars of high-performing Sales Organsations, namely:
- Competitive Strategy
- Customer Engagement
- Sales Talent
- Sales Management
- Sales Enablement
How does your Sales Organisation stack up? Find out by taking the ThinkSales 5 Pillar Strategic Sales Assessment™.
This first-of-its-kind 360-degree gap analysis report enables your Sales Leadership team to assess its strengths and detect weaknesses and impediments to revenue growth across the five pillars.
Click here for more information on the ThinkSales 5 Pillar Strategic Sales Assessment™.
