Why Salespeople Fail.. and What Hiring Managers Can Do to Prevent It
The moment when a hiring manager shakes the hand of a new hire and welcomes him or her to the team is a hopeful one on both sides of the agreement. Salespeople begin with great hope that they’ll have the staff support and goal structure to help customers and the ability to earn a living while they’re at it. Hiring managers hope that the hire will be a good fit— that they won’t have to interview again for the same role due to employee turnover.
Salespeople who join an organization may not succeed for several reasons. The failure to succeed in selling may show up in sales conversations — the salesperson could “dump” product features on customers, give price or product details too early in the sale, or end conversations with no next step commitment. This ends up in low conversion rates, low performance, and low sales numbers.
One of the main reasons that salespeople fail is because they have been hired for a sales role for which they are not the right fit. We know that different selling roles require different competencies. The industry research we conducted with the University of Colorado at Denver Business School proves that there are actually five primary selling roles in banks and credit unions, each requiring a different set of competencies that drive high performance.
The five roles are SERVICE SELLING (think “teller”), CONSULTATIVE SELLING (think “personal banker”), COMPETITIVE SELLING (think “commissioned mortgage originator” or “business development officer”), COMPLEX SELLING (think “commercial lender”), and SALES SUPERVISION (think “branch manager” or “sales manager”).
Two additional roles, FRONTLINE SUPERVISION (think “teller supervisor”) and ENGAGEMENT SELLING (think “universal banker”) are subsets of these primary roles.
For hiring managers, it’s vital to get an assessment that can evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of each candidate for the specific type of selling that they’ll be doing every day. These hiring managers need to look at sales capability as a series of skills that can be improved, not a natural-born talent or personality fit.
The most important first step for financial industry hiring managers is to screen candidates using the Optimum Performance Profile™ sales assessment. This cutting-edge hiring tool is based on the results of our industry research, and it can predict a salesperson’s performance with a much higher degree of accuracy than a standard interview.
Learn more about these assessments today to improve the success rates of your bank or credit union’s new hires, and get in touch for a free trial so you can increase revenue in 2019.
