Tips on How to Assess & Track Sales Competencies
The latest Sales Enablement Pro report makes a compelling case for assessing and tracking sales competency and behaviour change…
“Those that measure behavior change in training see an average rep quota attainment that is 7 percentage points higher than those that do not, and those that measure behavior change in coaching also see a 7-percentage-point improvement.”
In order to achieve this level of improvement, they advocate a clear strategy going forwards:
“In order to get the most out of their training, onboarding, and coaching initiatives, sales enablement should prioritize the development of the right behaviors with a system for evaluating competency levels and progress.
Where should your sales competency framework sit?
In our recent webinar taking a deep dive into Sales Competencies, Aaron Evan shares his thoughts on where and how a sales competency framework should be managed:
But how do you go about executing this as an organisation, at scale?
Consistency and objectivity are the name of the game for this one. The clearer you are on the approach and the criteria, the less open to interpretation and ambiguity it is and the more meaningful the data is.
So, to get started, be clear on the scale and evidence you are going to assess against.
Within e4enable we have a 1-5 rating scale against each competency but you can decide what each of these means and what evidence or observations match each level of rating.
Firstly, what are the ratings? These are e4enable’s as an example but you can match to your own definitions:
1 - It's too early to tell
2 - Evidencing some of the positive indicators but inconsistently
3 - Evidencing most of the positive indicators consistently but still development need to achieve all consistently
4 - Evidencing all of the positive indicators consistently in every engagement
5 - Not only evidences all indicators consistently but acts as a role model for this competency for others
This type of scale then needs to be mapped to your competencies and the negative or positive indicators you want your Sales Managers to observe. This will give you consistency and a level of objectivity across your sales teams. [Note: Having negative indicators won’t suit every organisation so be careful how you use them].
Let’s take “Problem Discovery” as an example competency.
Positive indicators would be:
Leads with problem questions
Digs further into the pain to uncover related implications
The customer acknowledged the pain
Has a high call to meeting or meeting to opportunity ratio (depending on their role)
Negative Indicators would be:
Jumps straight to solution without understanding customer challenges
Only asks situational questions
Collected no evidence of customer pain or challenges
Has a low call to meeting or meeting to opportunity ratio (depending on their role)
Now that we have established the qualitative and quantitative indicators we are looking for and assessing against, we can now look at how we will go about assessing the skills and behaviours.
If we keep the example above, here’s a list of common ways our customers use SMART objectives to collect and assess:
Role Play - especially effective in onboarding when live calls or meetings are not appropriate. This could be with you as their Manager or set and recorded with someone else on the team.
Client feedback
A challenge to listen to someone else’s call / meeting and make notes on any problems they identify - the notes would then be scored and feedback provided.
A video challenge to articulate a problem using a customer story or example - As a Manager you can then review how clearly this was delivered.
Benchmarking and reviewing leading metrics: e.g. call to meeting ratio or meeting to opportunity ratio as an indicator of successful outcomes.
Listening to call recordings or live calls and scoring each session against the competency criteria set above. I.e. for Problem Discovery I would rate the individual on a 1-5 scale for this specific task but I may also be scoring other competencies such as ‘Active Listening’ or ‘Building Rapport’ that form part of my competency framework.
Depending on the stage the rep was at (i.e. onboarding, BAU or on a career journey) will dictate how often Managers or enablement set and review these objectives, however the overall competency assessment rating should be changed as part of a formal review of this evidence and in discussion with the rep.
A couple of words of caution… Don’t set too many objectives at once, this will overwhelm your rep and have the opposite effect. You also need to bear in mind your ability and time as a Manager to provide timely feedback. Fail to feedback and you lose the trust of your rep and waste their time.
e4enable overlays competency progress with key metrics straight from your CRM for a 360 degree view
Summary
The last thing you want to do is have your managers or reps spend all their time collating evidence and information for coaching and review. This defeats the object. Ideally, you collate it over time and have it in an instantly accessible format that can be used in 1-2-1 coaching and during formal performance and competency reviews. This also means that from an overall program viewpoint, you can instantly put your finger on the pulse of what’s working and what’s not.
e4enable puts sales competencies into the heart of your sales operating rhythm and aligns all applicable qualitive and quantitative elements together in one place for continual coaching and review. It holds sales reps accountable for their objectives and enables you to benchmark and share best practice across your sales teams. It gives Sales Enablement teams instant access to track and assess progress without wading through reams of excel spreadsheets or chasing sales leaders for feedback across the business. Find out more…