Due to an inadequate amount of time and poor planning, a company struggled with many deadlines and important contracts. Once again, the sales team failed to achieve their monthly goals due to poor sales performance. The manager had to assume the burden of settling disputes amongst senior executives and boosting team productivity after failure. 

As a result of continued falls and lags, the company's leaders are under too much additional pressure to put in place a good contingency plan to improve sales.

What do you think affects the sales performance of this company in this case? 

Yes, you are guessing it right. The sales recruitment process for the company described above is at fault if carefully thought through. 

The company continually experiences sales failures due to the lack of competencies of the sales agents hired. You too may experience the situation if you continue to unknowingly consider candidates who are not right for the job position. We are talking about a right fit for your organization, not just by skills but also in terms of their personality and behavior. 

However, the age-old, one-on-one interviewing process that you still stick by is about to cost you the loss of a competent sales profile as well as your precious time. Why? It's because hiring decisions are often backed by biased interpretations of candidates' actions in a job interview. 

This might happen to you as well if you are not well-equipped or lack the right strategy to build a successful sales force. Hiring the right sales candidate can help you prevent future sales disasters in the company. In this article, we would pin-point the problems that stand as a hurdle between you and your best sales talent. Also, provide you with the best of all time solutions. 

All That Is Terribly Wrong With Your Sales Team!

Hiring managers commonly conduct traditional interviews in the belief that by interacting with candidates in person they will be able to identify the right candidate. But unfortunately, thats not the case in reality. 

Intuition cannot always be trusted, but must also not be discarded. Rather, with the help of growing resources and AI, you must use evidence to support your instincts before taking action on behalf of your organization.

Apart from intuition in recruitment, there are some other factors that affect sales performance tremendously. Some of these are your outdated sales enablement program, lack of monitoring and management, higher customer attrition rates due to poor customer service, or unavailability of generation-appropriate technologies. All of these limit the reach of your sales team to target customers. 

Sales Performance: Seeking Your Urgent Attention

The sales force requirements of an organization change with its stage of growth, according to Harvard Business School research by Andris A. Zoltners, Prabhakant Sinha, and Sally E. Lorimer. (Match Your Sales Force Structure to Your Business Life Cycle)

Be it a growing organization or an established one, you will need to ensure that the sales function stays productive and organization-specific. However, it would be unwise to spend too much time training the sales teams on ‘how to practice strategy, implement plans and sell effectively'. 

Therefore, chalking out plans and strategies ahead of time will help you keep track of productivity. The aspects that require urgent attention are;

• Lack of appropriate tools for sales reps: Companies need to equip their sales team with the right tools and training for effective sales. 
• Lack of sales performance monitoring: In order to establish a functional sales team, KPIs should be used to monitor the performance of the sales team, track productivity, and set goals.
• Unmanageable customer attrition rate: Retention of customers requires adequate sales skills. Since 80% of future profits come from 20% of existing customers, increasing the productivity of the sales team that could follow up aptly is very important. 
• Lack of up-to-date sales rep: Knowledge of generation-specific technologies is essential for appearing up-to-date and prepared.
• Lack of fit-for-role salespeople: Hiring competent sales team members to accelerate your client approach performance should be prioritized. 

Preparing for a new sales team?

PMaps Solution: Sales Profiler Test

PMaps can help you assess sales-enthusiastic Gen-Z candidates who can bring about a positive change in your organization by engaging an active workforce to produce an expected output. You can hire on the basis of your requirements for the job post as per the ideal standards through customizable sales assessments. 

PMaps helps you hire the ideal candidate by understanding the organization's expectations and work role. We bring to you two assessments specially crafted to identify the right salesperson based on the work.

Direct Sales Assessment

The frontline sales function uses a simple team of individuals that engages directly with the customers. It is one of the safest sales structures that an organization uses. Each member of the sales team adds value to the total productivity of the company. 

To assess the candidates that are right for your firm, you must consider the evaluation of the soft skills required to be a successful salesperson. An ideal frontline sales member should be well-behaved, internally driven, and positive. 

PMaps Direct Sales Assessments assess the following behavioral b abilities to determine whether a person would make a good frontline seller;

Channel Sales Assessment

Channel sales by nature tend to be broad and highly chained in webs of networks. The members of the network therefore have to maintain appropriate boundaries to function effectively in the group. The channel sales team must be capable of exhibiting enthusiasm and liveliness while dealing with clients. 

Internal control and emotional stability are major competencies of each member that influence the overall functioning of the team. Channel sales aspirants should be able to retain positivity in difficult situations. Therefore, some of the important competencies that determine the quality of a channel sales employee through PMaps Channel Sales Assessments are;

Conclusion

The empirical real-time reports will enable you to set appropriate training goals for your team and determine frontline sales representatives. If you want to maximize the human resource benefits for your business, hire efficiently, whether it is your direct sales team or your channel sales team.

Our assessments provide you with the best optimized and bug-proof assessment interface.  Recruit best sales team for your organization to prevent consequences of bad sales hires. You may also avail our services by contacting through our website and scheduling a quick call with our experts.

What's even better? Here at PMaps, you can attend a free demo before customizing a job-specific assessment. Wait no longer to take advantage of our pre-hire tool for choosing a high performing salesperson!

‍