How Good Are Your Sales People?

Your company spends a lot of money putting the best products and services in front of buyers, advertising to your target audience and providing sales support, training and literature.

But, whether all this effort and investment pays off comes down to one question: How good are your sales people at closing new accounts?

In most companies the honest answer is probably, "Not very."

In fact, given the universally accepted metric that 20 percent of sales people bring in 80 percent of new customers, it's clear that most sales reps make a living selling to present customers, not by bringing in new business.

While it clearly is important to sell to and retain your present customers, your company won't grow to its true potential without out constantly bringing new accounts.

Therefore, finding and keeping sales stars who revel in the challenge of bringing in new customers is the biggest challenge faced by sales managers. Here’s why:

1. Hiring star salespeople is a hit or miss proposition. Traditional hiring interviews and aptitude tests are poor indicators of whether a sales candidate will succeed in the field. If you don't think this is the case, consider that over thirty percent of all sales people quit or are released within 18 months.

2. Many salespeople avoid pitching new accounts because they don't have the confidence or ability to deliver a winning sales presentation. Remember the 20/80 rule for new accounts?

3. Training can't overcome poor sales hires. If you don’t select sales job candidates with a proven aptitude and innate selling skills no amount of training is going to make them successful.

The good news is these problems can be minimized by a sales skills assessment process based on how scoring sales people as they present your products and services on a simulated sales call to a prospective new customer.

The concept is both simple and logical: put sales people in front of buyers and see if they can sell. Then, hire those that prove they can. There's no interpretation of theoretical questionnaires and aptitude tests needed.

Just as important, assessing your present sales team lights a fire under many sales people who have lost the edge in making new business presentations.

Granted, role-playing sales presentations to test sales people is hardly a new idea, but quantifying the results for use as a management tool has not been systemized until now, at least to our knowledge.

The assessment process can be as basic as listing the sales skills that are needed to make winning sales presentations and then scoring your sales people on them immediately after they make sale presentation to someone who acts as a buyer in a typical new prospect company.

The following are nine sales skill areas used in a professional presentation-based sales assessment:

1. Creating a favorable first impression
2. Use of conversational and listening skills
3. Presentation management - effective use of the buyer's time
4. Creating buyer confidence- presentation of company credentials,
products and services
5. Identifying the buyer's needs and solutions to them
6. Qualifying the buyer and uncovering the decision chain
7. Communicating a Total Value Proposition
8. Handling buyer objections
9. Closing the sale - advancing the sales process

The assessment can be used in simulated sales presentations or to score performance on actual sales calls in the field.

Go to www.SalesJudge.com for more information on online sales assessment.