Keeping on Track - Are You Ready to Beef Up Your Sales Force in 2010?

By Dana Borowka, MA

Now is the time to plan ahead for beefing up your sales force and customer service. You don't want to have an organization thinking like a dodo bird. Adaptation is everything and those who don't adapt will go the way of the dodo bird. Some may laugh at the use of the word "dodo", but nothing is funny about a business losing its competitive edge due to unmanaged change.

To hire and retain the best sales and customer service people, your management team needs to know what makes them tick! We believe that without truly understanding how someone operates, your organization will miss out on utilizing talent to its fullest potential. The old method of managing by force is long gone – strategic hiring and tactical management is going to be the difference between market penetration and customer retention or market erosion.

An example of this is when a sales manager continues to beat the sales force up over numbers. Over time, turnover increases and the reputation of being a sweat shop reaches the street and it can become very difficult to attract top talent. Numbers are very important. One question that should be asked to determine what is going on in the market place is: What are some of the crucial needs currently as well as 12 - 24 - 36 months down the road? Then a strategy can begin to take shape with the tactics on how to approach potential customers in a very targeted and well branded methodology. It doesn't take years of research nor does it take millions of dollars to find out what the needs are in order to increase sales. It takes an open ear in order to listen then respond with the help of your ground force - your sales and customer service team.

In today's environment, it takes an "all hands on deck" attitude and a willingness to think of unique and targeted approaches to earn market share. Whether you are about to hire or assist your current team to reach new levels, utilizing an in-depth work style and personality assessment can assist in your strategically tactical approaches for management and market penetration through understanding who you have on board and what strengths are present within your team and each team member.

A proper assessment will reach well beyond the question of whether the person can sell. It will describe their selling style, how they problem solve and deal with stress (no one can afford to hire a hot head). An assessment will give information on how the individual's thinking process will meet the needs of the clients, what is the best approach to work with the individual so they can effectively onboard to hit the ground running, and whether the individual is more independent or does the person need a great amount of management attention in order to feel good about their work. Those are just a few of the kinds of things that you should be getting feedback on from utilizing a work style and personality assessment.

The following are nine ways to use in-depth work style and personality testing in the workplace to help attract, retain and manage your sales and customer service team:

Get the real picture. Of course, every sales and customer service candidate wants to put their best foot forward during an interview. However through an in-depth work style and personality assessment, you uncover a great deal about their ability to work well with other personalities, their problem solving abilities, their thought processes and their ability to tolerate stress.

The assessment gives you objective information that can help you make an informed decision about if this person is a good fit for the job and for the team. If you decided to hire the person, the questions you ask during the hiring process will reduce your learning curve as a manager on how best to manage this person from day one.

Help them be all that they can be. Every sales and customer service person has strengths and weaknesses. Find out the real truth with an objective measure. Once you pinpoint the good and the bad, then you place them in the right position and coach them on where to improve.

Take me to your leaders. An assessment gives the manager and sales or customer service team a common language about how they like to interact. The assessments can help you train future managers on how to get the best out of the team.

Know how to manage difficult people. Face it, there will always be difficult people and flare ups on the job. Use objective assessments to diagnose potential sources of workplace conflict. The best way to deal with a problem is to prevent it in the first place.

Get everybody to play nice. Sales and IT, customer service and marketing, operations and financial people have to interact to make the company run smoothly. Too many employees get frustrated with other co-workers and just wonder why everyone doesn't act like them. Through the use of an in-depth profile, managers can coach employees how to interact better with peers.

Treat co-workers the way they want to be treated. In today's fast-paced world of business, there is little time to get to know many of your co-workers. Using an in-depth assessment as the basis for team building exercises can quickly get everyone to have a healthier respect for other ways of seeing the world.

Make managers better leaders. The days of seat of the pants leadership are over. When sales and customer service managers understand what makes their people tick, then they can be better leaders. Knowing an individual's traits can help with motivating teams, communicating change and delegating authority.

Pick better teams. Today so much work is done by ad hoc teams that come together for a specific purpose. Before you assemble a sales or customer service team it pays to know the strengths and weaknesses of the team members. Sometimes this can be the difference between a productive team that gets the job done and one that pulls apart at the seams.

Set people up for success. Sometimes we hire the right employee and put them in the wrong job. Understanding preferred work styles and where a person would be happiest goes a long way to improving retention and productivity.

While an in-depth work style assessment can be a valuable resource before you hire sales and customer service people, perhaps the true value of any assessment comes in using the insights it provides along the entire spectrum of employment. They lend objectivity to decisions that may otherwise be largely subjective.

Remember, it is not how many great people you hire. The true measure is how many great people you keep! To find out more please email us at reception@lighthouseconsulting.com or call 310-453-6556, ext 403.

If you would like additional information on this topic or others, please contact your Human Resources department or Lighthouse Consulting Services LLC, 3130 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Santa Monica, CA 90403, (310) 453-6556, dana@lighthouseconsulting.com & our website: www.lighthouseconsulting.com

Lighthouse Consulting Services, LLC provides a variety of services, including in-depth personality assessments for new hires & staff development, team building, interpersonal & communication training, conflict management, workshops, and executive & employee coaching. To order our book, "Cracking the Personality Code" - please visit our website, www.crackingthepersonalitycode.com.