Andrew Dugdale of SalesAsessment.com offers six of the best reasons for using an effective assessment test when hiring or assessing sales training needs.

In the current tough business environment, it is vital to fit the right people in the right roles – particularly in sales. Many organisations are failing to win deals, even though the bids they have put together are  in themselves excellent. At the same time, more and more bids are ending up with no buying decision at all at the end of the bid process. Research by both DowJones and Aberdeen Group show that, in many cases, this is a people issue, where an incompetent salesperson or one ill-suited to the particular role is involved.

To combat this problem what every sales leader needs is a robust and objective way of assessing whether team members have the competencies and skills necessary to succeed in their assigned roles. And salespeople need to be assessed against a benchmark  set of competencies  which are at set at a level where it is safe to  assume results.

In the second in a series of articles, Andrew Dugdale discusses how to take an objective approach to identifying specific shortfalls in your sales team’s capabilities.

According to many thought-leaders – McKinsey and DowJones included – customer expectations of salespeople have changed very significantly of late, driven by massive changes in their own market requirements and accelerated by the recent financial turmoil.

McKinsey findings show that many, if not all of these changes are here to stay. And it is very clear from recent DowJones research that many companies have not responded to evolving customer expectation as quickly as would have been desirable. Unfortunately, this slow response has contributed to salespeople’s failure to deliver revenue results and sales wins (see my recent article in ModernSelling.com ‘Achieving Growth in Tough Times’).

Nevertheless, the impact of these changes on salespeople has been profound, and particularly on the sales competencies and skills they now require in order to deliver optimal results.

In the first of a series of articles, Andrew Dugdale evaluates the business impact of sales training and hiring.

Salespeople, as we are constantly told, are the single biggest asset of a business. Yet, are they becoming a significantly less-effective asset in desperate need of care and maintenance?

Consider the ‘today scenario’ in most businesses and you will find that a number of significant changes have taken place during the current financial upheaval, many of which are here to stay.