I Don't Believe in This Stuff

The company president said, "I don't believe in this stuff." The stuff he referred to was assessing and training, two of the staples of an effective sales development plan. When asked about his effectiveness growing a sales force he thought he was doing quite well. When pushed about the details, quite well deteriorated into the following statistics. In the last 5 years he had hired 20 salespeople and 18 of them failed. It makes you wonder what would have happened if he believed in assessments and training. Surely he couldn't have done any worse! In reality, if was using an effective assessment he probably would have been cautioned against hiring at least 10 of those ghosts (salespeople whose efforts continue to haunt you) if not more. And if he was training, chances are he could have helped the other 8 succeed. The key though is the assessment. The right one (mine) will accurately predict which salespeople will succeed in your business. It will also flag those issues that require development so that you can work on the likely problem areas before they become problems for the new salesperson. There won't be any perfect salespeople coming along but the good ones are out there. You simply need a way to identify them, develop them and retain them.

(c) Copyright 2005 Objective Management Group, Inc.