Ten ways a competency framework can transform your business
Forrester…Gartner…e4enable 😜 - these are just some of the voices singing the praises of a competency framework to underpin a successful revenue team. If that wasn’t reason enough to create one, we thought we would take a look at the ten amazing ways that they can support your business:
1. Recruitment
The value of a competency framework starts right at the beginning of the journey in helping you to recruit people with the best chance of success. By establishing the skills, behaviours and knowledge that are likely to lead to success in your organisation, you know what to look for in the recruitment process. Whilst some skills and behaviours can be taught, knowing the attributes to look for will give you a good foundation to work from.
2. Onboarding
Focus is everything where onboarding is concerned. With a competency framework, not only do you know which competencies to focus on but you can benchmark each rep and put together a bespoke onboarding to focus on the areas relevant to each rep and measure the improvements (*spoiler alert…more below*) This approach has been proven to speed up ramp time and allow reps to be equipped with the right skills and contributing to revenue sooner.
3. Skills Gaps
Wouldn’t it be great to be able to pinpoint reps’ specific skills gaps that are impacting revenue and focus your enablement efforts where it matters most? This might particularly resonate with any Enablers currently in the process of planning for 2024 and wondering what to prioritise. Well an operationalised competency framework will provide give you those answers and allow you to train and coach reps where and when they need it.
4. Training
B2B sales reps forget 70% of the information they learn within a week of training, and 87% will forget it within a month (don’t shoot the messenger, that’s according to Gartner!) You will no doubt have delivered some brilliant training sessions this year and will be planning more in 2024 so reaping long term rewards from this learning is important but there are two factors at influence this. Firstly, delivering the right training to the right people at the right time - as you can see from Forrester’s latest research, the most successful organisations are the ones that train sellers in the areas that are relevant to them. Secondly, making sure that training is not a ‘one and done’ thing. Linking the learning to your operationalised competency framework, getting buy-in from managers, making reps accountable for follow up actions and ensuring it is reinforced in ongoing coaching can really help. (We have a great podcast episode on this topic as well as a handy Top Ten Tips Whitepaper
5. Coaching
We all know that focusing on sales results alone will not drive change and create a sustainable high performance team. Coaching is proven to have a significant impact on sales outcomes, staff retention and morale but it needs careful execution, support and follow up. A competency framework can help you to go from good intentions to successful delivery by providing a clear view of what good looks like. Think of defining sales competencies as outlining your goal. If you don’t know the destination, how can you plan the journey? If you don’t define what good looks like, how can you develop and coach your sales team to be the best versions of themselves? It’s essential to do this so not only do you know what you’re aiming for, but to enable you to scale, so does everyone else. You need to set the standard, the expectations right from the beginning – it avoids the assumption trap. Take a look at our 4 step guide to a coaching culture for more tips
6. Top Performer Analysis
Have you ever dreamed of being able to clone your top performers? Imagine creating an army of reps who smash their targets….Well short of going full ‘Dolly The Sheep’, top performer analysis is as close as you’re going to get. The data you can achieve from aligning your competency framework with data from your tech stack can allow you to see the shared attributes of your top reps and identify and focus on gaps in the rest of the team. It could well be your untapped superpower 🦸 - read our blog for more info.
7. Measure Enablement Impact
Sales is not short of metrics but if your sales enablement measurement is focusing on how many hours of training your sales reps have completed then you might be faced with a look of ‘so what’? There is a growing demand for Sales Enablement to be a strategic, revenue generating function and meaningful measurement is at the heart of this to identify priority areas, measure results and know what is working.
Forrester have clearly set out the need for clearly defined competencies mapped to outcomes:
“It’s going to be extremely difficult to measure sales effectiveness if we haven’t clearly defined and articulated what skills and knowledge are needed to be successful in a particular role…
1. Define seller competencies.
2. Competencies should be mapped to business goals.
3. Identify and define competency proficiency levels.
4. Assess seller competencies.
…By taking the time to map the required competencies for each sales role, you’re ensuring that reps who have those defined competencies are more productive, efficient, and, as a result, more successful.”
Listen to Enablement supremo, Kunal Pandya talk about how he has raised the measurement bar here and download our Complete Guide to Enablement Measurement
8. Career Pathways
If you’ve ever promoted someone too soon, seen a top rep struggle in their next role or lost a good SDR as they had no vision of where their career was heading then a Competency Framework is for you! These pitfalls can be avoided with the structured and transparent career pathways that come from defining what good looks like at each stage of the journey and developing bespoke programmes for each rep based on their own needs. Take a look at the highlights from a discussion we had with Shabri Lakhani on this topic.
9 Competencies Are Not Just For Sales
There is a reason why the term Revenue Enablement has gained momentum. There is more than just the sales team that impacts an organisation’s revenue and performance and Competencies can be used to benefit each of these teams. Customer Success is a great example - after all, it is the key to higher retention and customer lifetime value. Just as in sales, competencies help to define, develop and measure what good looks like. In fact, we have found that CS and sales competencies have a lot in common with some of the most popular being resilience, negotiation, problem-solving, empathy. Knowing where gaps exist in these areas and focusing Enablement efforts will have an impact on retention and growth. Read our Chief Customer Officer Rachel McCourty’s blog for more info.
10. Deliver Long Term Change
Competency frameworks provide a strong foundation for delivering genuine long term behaviour change in an organisation. One of our customers credited our competency intelligence platform with “playing an integral part in successfully progressing (their) sales transformation ambitions over the last 12 months – embedding the changes in a scalable and consistent way and driving long term adoption.”
A competency framework allows you to create a vision of your end goal in the form of skills, behaviours and knowledge and, coupled with training and coaching, gives you a transparent pathway to achieving it and embedding it for the long term. If you are embarking on a change programme then listen to our recent podcast episodes with Arman Dolobjian and Andrew Barry that have some helpful tips.
Now that must be reason enough to get going on your own Competency Framework!