The Art and Science of Breakthrough Sales Performance Part 2 Todd Harris, Ph.D.

Director of Research

A Framework for Research-Based Sales Selection (UDACS)

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Understand your companys current sales strategy. Determine what behavior is needed for sales success. Assess current sales talent. Coach where and when feasible. Screen systematically.

Understand Your Companys Current Sales Strategy What do you sell? Who do you sell to? How do you create value for your customers?

Determine What Behavior is Needed for Sales Success What knowledge, skills, abilities and others (KSAOs) are needed to execute the sales strategy? The PRO. What separates your A players from the rest? Sales organizations tend to be very metric-driven, but those metrics often focus almost exclusively on:
Outcomes: Ex: Percent to Goal. Lead Indicators: Ex: Appointments made. This type of data is very useful for understanding what happened, but is not as useful for understanding why it happened.

Assess Current Sales Talent What is your sales organizations current capacity to deliver against the sales strategy? Gap analysis. The knowing versus doing divide. PI and SSAT. Honest and data-driven answers to these questions will accurately steer selection and retention planning and decisions.

Coach Where and When Feasible Sales training. But are improvements sustainable? The importance of leadership, coaching, and reinforcement. Coaching must be targeted to the individual (PI + SSAT + CFS). You cant save the world. Where is time best allocated?

Screen Systematically Use a combination of standardized, legally-defensible instruments. Examples:

Qualification screens. Personality assessments. Skills tests. Interviews. Simulations.

Use consistently and check validity.

Are You Making Any of the Following Mistakes? Hiring to an out-dated sales strategy. Hiring sales representatives in your own image. Rushing it. HR/Sales Operations imbalance. No defined process. Defined process, but used inconsistently.

The Power of Assessments Industry: Automobile Dealerships: A one StandardDeviation increase in ASSERTIVENESS level translated into 46 more cars sold over a four-month period (69 versus 23). Industry: Manufacturing: A one Standard-Deviation increase in PROACTIVITY level translated into a difference of $2 million in sales over a 27-month period ($2,880,981 versus $554,013). Industry: Biosciences: Use of SSAT and targeted CFS sales training contributes to 44% sales growth in two-year span ($38.3 M to $55.3 M).

Concluding Thoughts Remember, the cost of poor hiring decisions, both in time and money, far outweighs the investments necessary to build the right sales profile and to implement the right assessment process. Making sales hiring and development decisions based on gut instinct as opposed to data does not work. This equation always holds true, but especially during challenging economic times, when the gap between the strong and the weak widens.

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"Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is got to dream, boy. It comes with the territory." From Death of a Salesman by Arthur Miller 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
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Thank you!
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