Sales Talent Management or Beating the Odds for Even greater Sales Success - Oct. 28, 2011

A Learning Session was held on "Sales Talent Management" or "Beating the Odds for Even greater Sales Success" on Oct. 28, 2011.

In yesterday’s learning session, I addressed keys to success for Sales Organizations, and for that matter in any portion within a company.

Overall, Benchmarks help identify "job fit." Harvard had followed 320,000 sales people over a 20 year period and determined that it wasn't education or skills that determined success, but "Job Fit"(Thinking Style[IQ], Behavioral Traits [EQ] and Interests).

Therefore the keys identified in the presentation were:

1)      Benchmark (also called Performance Model or Job Pattern) around top performers, while identifying poor performer’s competencies that are different. This allows you to identify the essential competencies for that position that drive success. These benchmarks need to be position specific, not industry specific. (Do you think your company is exactly the same as another company, even if you are in the same industry with very similar products? The other company(s) are as different as people are. Human DNA is 99.9% the same, it is the 0. 1% that creates the diversity we see each day with the people with whom we interact.)

a.       Ideally you need to use assessments or methodologies that can quickly allow re-benchmarking if new “Top performers” come into the picture and/or as the market needs change.

b.      Have a way to identify Training Needs Analysis (TNA) for those competencies falling outside the benchmarks, in order to help to develop programs for Career Development for individuals and groups.

2)     Use these benchmarks to help screen, interview and validate around these separator competencies in order to identify stronger performers during the recruiting/pre-hire process. The sooner you can bring in new talent around top performer benchmarks, the sooner your organization begins to upgrade. Creating this slight edge, that grows over time, increases sustainability and profitability. It also, most likely, will reduce training costs and speed integration time.

3)      Use these benchmarks for existing positions, in developing career development programs and training needs for their career development plan.

4)      Also, use these benchmarks to identify individuals for succession management plans, coupled with managerial and performance review results. Ideally Performance Reviews are 360 based, and online, to allow complete confidentiality and candidness by those rating the ratee/Manager. Also online, speeds  results, eliminating assembling and analysis time. Most importantly, it helps to maintain objectivity in reviews, and eliminate subjectivity, which increases trust and engagement.

Once these processes are in place, or simultaneously, identify the three ties of Sales Performers in your organization.

Why three Tiers?
 

Because, it has been well established in multiple studies, that in any Sales Organization there are the Top performers, Middling/Average performers and Poor performers. How much are the latter two tiers costing you?

It follows the 80/20 rule, 20% of your sales force is delivering 80% of your sales. (Of course the same also applies to your client mix, 20% of your clients are delivering 80% of your sales and profitability.)

Calculate (via a utility analysis) how much more can be gained if you can develop an Average performer into a Top performer, or a bottom performer to even a middling/average performer. The results can be amazing. If interested, feel free to ask how this can be done.

The slight Edge: In many sports, it is a split second of difference that separates a winner from being second or third. A few years back, there were documentaries on the steps athletes take for these 10^th of a second differences. Swimmers have videos taken showing their stroke techniques in a glass tank versus an ideal stroke. Runners are videoed for motion analysis.  Golfers modify their swings using videos comparing theirs with the ideal (benchmark) swing of efficiency. Business is no different.

If you take these steps not only will your Sales significantly improve, but if implemented throughout the organization, this slight edge gets magnified throughout the corporation! If your competition is doing this, where does it put you? Can you and your company afford not to put into place these kinds of steps and procedures?

The decision is yours and your company’s! Can CEO’s, Senior Managers and companies ignore these in this dynamic global market? It seems highly unlikely that sustained performance can be maintained without these kinds of methods being implemented.

Self-Appraisal? And that's all? What happened to the Performance Review?

Yesterday I came across the article below by Reylito A. H. Elbo entitled "Experimenting with Self-Appraisal." While his comments about his experience was that mature responses were made, it fails to address the main point of appraisals, to help to eliminate bias in evaluating performance and giving meaningful feedback to an employee. In my doing Assessment Center work, in evaluating senior managers, it is amazing how many see themselves vastly different than how others view them. (Of course this is true of all of us to some degree or other.)

In the early '80's in our Fortune 100 company, we were trained to have the subordinate prepare their evaluation, using the same form as we would being filling out on the individual. We also began to use quantified and qualified performance parameters at this point in time. Training was held about the process and competencies involved and a rating scale presented to help encourage uniformity of review results across the company.

This review process allows the subordinate to address the same areas of performance as those to be used by the manager. We would then exchange the reviews and mutually discuss them, with the manager taking notes of areas of difference and agreement. The manager then went back and wrote up the review taking into account the discussion. Then there would be a final review session, a discussion held, and the employee signed the review and could make notes of agreement or disagreement to the review.

As mentioned earlier in this blog site, organizations began to flatten and become matrixed in the '80's, so many times the subordinate was doing things the manager was not well aware of. As an organization flattens, interpersonal skills become more important. The amount of direct supervision declines substantially, and many times there are activities and accomplishments the subordinate may be proud of, that are overlooked, not known, or not valued by the manager.

In this fashion the performance appraisal became a better reflection of actual performance by gaining input from the employee and helped to capture and highlight, more accurately, areas for recognition that might have been lost otherwise. This was an effective method for dialog and alignment between the manager and the employee rather than just a one way discussion from the top down, which had been the case before this process was used. [Note: Salary discussions were separated from the Review Process and held later, at another time.]

In the '90s, 180 degree and/or 360 performance reviews began to be used, as this helped to gain a better, broader, more comprehensive and objective view of someone's performance. However, it was time consuming as the questions had to be assembled, mailed or handed out to different people who interacted with the individual in question. These questionnaires had to be filled out and returned. Then, the information was collected, analyzed and written up and incorporated in the overall quantified/qualified (now called metrics) areas of the performance evaluation (many times this took weeks of effort).

Normally the manager or an assistant had to "assemble/tabulate" this information, so she/he saw all the responses and comments, and who made them. The manager might decide to value some comments/ratings more than others, or disregard ratings entirely, if it suited the purpose of supporting the view of the manager. However overall,  it was a much better way of obtaining objective information for conducting a performance review, as it helped in gaining greater buy-in from the employee as these were no longer just the observations or opinions of the manager, but included input from many other people. Most of the time, this was more palatable to the person being reviewed and this encouraged greater participation in the interchange between boss and subordinate.

In today's technological world, it has to be asked why companies and organizations do not, or will not use 360's?

The internet provides the conduit for the performance form dissemination and is to be filled out online (many times only taking 15 minutes per rater), and if "assembled" and collated totally online, it offers COMPLETE CONFIDENTIALLY of how each person rates the individual in question, as well as capturing "comments" around each competency or area being reviewed. The assembly time takes a matter of minutes and can generate full detailed and informative reports, not days or weeks like before, and the information and results are not touched by any individual. This helps in obtaining CANDID comments and ratings from: peers, subordinates, internal/external customers, and in many cases today, multiple bosses, and of course the person rates him/herself.

This significantly adds to helping to identify: gaps that need to be addressed, coaching that can be done by the Manager or an external Coach/Consultant, Training Needs identified, and this builds stronger support for performance evaluations and what will ultimately be placed in the Personnel File.

Below is a quick graphical depiction of the evolution of the performance review system. Hopefully, the person who posed the original question to the writer in the link below, can be enlightened to the possibilities in today's more sophisticated HR processes, and "dabbling" can be replaced with concrete and proven processes and technologies.


 

My boss told me to improve our performance appraisal system. Specifically, he suggested that we dabble in self-appraisal and allow our employees to share in the responsibility of evaluating their own performance. What do you think?

http://www.bworldonline.com/content.php?section=23&title=Experimenting-with-self-appraisal&id=39160

In The Workplace -- Reylito A.H Elbo

Experimenting with self-appraisal