Driving Better Results Starts with Better Baseline Skill Assessments

Increasing competition is reducing your business’s value proposition. Barriers to entry are falling in all industries, giving rise to new, aggressive players. Companies can no longer rely on branding to drive sales.

Customers today seek fast, cost-efficient solutions, and many of these new competitors can deliver on those expectations. However, in their race to the sale, they’re ignoring one of the most pressing issues in sales today: customer interaction.

Only one in 10 executives perceive that they are getting value from meetings with salespeople, according to Forrester. Additional research from Gallup and Accenture echo this finding. The bottom line: the competition isn’t interacting with the customer the way that they need to. Herein lies the opportunity to differentiate the buying experience with sales dialogue excellence.

Improving sales dialogue skills requires expedience and incisiveness. Expedience is vital because sellers need to acquire new skills fast so that they can get back to selling. Incisiveness is crucial because it identifies which sales skill improvements will yield the highest return on your organization’s investment. Zeroing in on these areas requires analysis rather than hunches or instincts.

Skill Optimization Assessment Process

A Sales Skill Optimization Assessment is designed to analyze every layer of a company’s sales force. We interview the Sales Leaders while also administering an online skills assessment to the sales force. This information provides a complete picture of the selling capabilities. Our assessment will:

• Identify how salespeople compare to a cross-industry benchmark of other sales organizations
• Enable Sales Leaders and L&D Leaders to determine which skill gaps are prevalent across the sales organization, with the ability to look more closely at sub-units, such as by role, territory or market segment
• Empower the Sales Leaders and L&D Leaders with information that can be used to design and build a multi-year curriculum to close skill gaps

The results of these findings reveal insights often unseen by Sales Leaders and L&D Leaders. The experience allows sellers to glimpse how customers view them. This renewed self-perception helps sellers improve how they “show up” when meeting customers. This critical data covering the entirety of the sales force is available within six to eight weeks.

A Skill Optimization Assessment gets straight to the most critical questions, so participants aren’t tied up with a lengthy process. At Richardson Sales Performance, we deliver sales diagnostics in a “self-rater” format. Meanwhile, management diagnostics are administered to both the participant and their direct reports. Participants only need 30 to 45 minutes to complete the online diagnostic, which includes 25 to 35 questions. We seek a deeper understanding of current capabilities by wording the questions with nuanced language that uses algorithmic scoring to focus the assessment of the participant’s actual behavior efficiently.

With these data points, the Richardson Sales Performance team analyses the results and provides a full summary of the findings in a detailed report. This delivery includes a presentation to key stakeholders from both Sales and L&D organizations.

Effect Change with a Targeted Approach

Richardson Sales Performance’s Skill Optimization Assessment provides the unbiased, objective data that Sales Leaders and L&D Leaders need to drive sales dialogue excellence. Our analysis works like a map containing both the destination and the route. Moreover, because the results stem from the participants’ responses, sellers can be confident that the training is suited to their specific needs. The result is an investment that pays off because it carries a targeted approach.