Douglas Huissen conducts research on the impact of Generation Z on sales and acquisition, focusing on Salesstep assessments. The research focuses on measuring motivation profiles and finding significant discrepancies between Generation X and Generation Z. A shortage of “hunters” in IT teams is identified, creating problems for acquisition. Changing sales methods and the challenges this presents are discussed, with pain cited as a stronger motivator than pleasure, especially in sales. The importance of understanding motivation and personality in the sales team is emphasized, as is the need to adapt approaches and leadership styles to be effective in dealing with Generation Z in sales.
Zo zijn er ook vacatures bij Fleetcor Inc., een wereldwijd aanbieder van tank – en oplaadpassen en van mobiliteits – en betaaloplossingen in de zakelijke markt, die werkt onder diverse labels zoals Travelcard B.V. Peter van Hemert is Managing Director Travelcard B.V. & VP Sales Europe FLEETCOR. Hij stuurt rechtstreeks vijf salesteams aan die eerder onder lokaal management vielen, voor elf Europese landen. Fleetocor brengt oplossingen naar verschillende landen die uniform zijn en daarmee schaalbaar. De opdracht die Peter kreeg bij zijn aanstelling in 2021, was gericht op uniformiteit en culturele verbondenheid. Het doel was om door synergie tussen de landen meer resultaat te boeken dan de som der delen.
OMGEVING
Zit sales gewoonweg in je, of is het aan te leren? De stelling dat ‘sales in je zit,’ wordt ontkracht door diverse publieke en private opleiders die stellen dat het vak te leren is. Er zijn bijna 100 opleidingen Commerciële Economie in Nederland die uitgaan van een landelijk opleidingsprofiel. Ook private opleiders kennen op de praktijk gerichte leeruitkomsten, gericht op de ontwikkeling van skills. Deze opleidingen zijn breed en leiden op tot een veelvoud van functies. De vraag is waar werkgevers op selecteren. En in hoeverre helpt een ’skillsbased’ aanpak in het werving – en selectieproces om eventuele aanleg zichtbaar te maken? En heeft deze aanpak dan ook een voorspellende waarde voor succes?
Dit experiment gaat over ’transferable skills’, oftewel kunnen ontwikkelde skills in de ene functie en sector worden ingezet in een andere sector? Zo werd Felicia van London, die als Verpleegkundige werkte in de Zorg, samen met 49 andere sollitcitanten uitgenodigd voor een assessment met de tool van SalesStep. Dat gaf haar bevestiging van haar skills, zoals empathie (aanvoelen wat er bij anderen speelt en daar iets mee doen); stressbestendigheid (kalmte, rust, consistentie in handelend); communicative vaardigheden (duidelijk en to the point kunnen communiceren) et cetera. Kwaliteiten die zij nu dagelijks inzet in haar salesfunctie bij Travelcard. “De werksfeer in de Zorg was niet altijd leuk, maar ik heb wel goed leren luisteren naar wat mensen echt nodig hebben,” zo stelt ze. “Waar ik nu aan werk is wat strakker in een gesprek te zitten, want er moet natuurlijk wel wat verkocht worden.”
GEDRAGSPATRONEN
Peter stelt: “Ik zal nooit iemand diskwalificeren op vooropleiding en ik kijk nauwelijks naar het c.v.. Ik kijk naar wat iemand motiveert, wat die komt bregen en wil leren. Ik ben op zoek naar drijveren en of iemand het zich heeft om het vak to leren.”
MINDSET
Kenmerkend voor deze casus is het anders kijken en het gebruik van één uniforme tool over regio’s en daarmee culturen heen. De dashboards worden in de teams gebruikt en besproken voor individuele ontwikkeling en teambuilding. In de Europese teams spreekt men inmiddels de uniforme taal, met begrippen als ‘race time’ en ‘sales mindset’ en dat verbindt. De mindset is nu openheid over de eigen ontwikkeling.
ARENA
Het merendeel van de vacaturestellingen in Nederland vraagt om te solliciteren met het klassieke cv met aantoonbare relevante opleiding en werkervaring in de sector. Peter stelt: “Een c.v. wordt veelal toegeschreven naar de vacante functie. Een skillsaanpak haalt het echte profiel naar boven.” Waarom blijven we dan vasthouden aan het c.v., als dit maar beperkt bruikbaar lijkt te zijn? Is LinkedIn dan een betere oplossing? Vervolgonderzoek moet dit uitwijzen maar uit dit experiment blijkt in ieder geval dat talenten zijn geselecteerd op skills, die met een regulier c.v. zouden zijn afgewezen.
CULTUUR
De algemene bevinding over alle experimenten heen, is dat internationale grote bedrijven zoals Xebia en DHL in de andere experimenten, net als Fleetcor in dit experiement, al een stap verder lijken te zijn dan de corporates in Nederland. Ook die zijn door het Integraal Skillspaspoort Programma uitgenodigd voor ‘skillsbased’ experimenten, maar hebben vooralsnog een afwachtende houding.
HECHTHEID EN EERDERE POGINGEN
Peter heeft ook in zijn eerdere functies bij andere organisaties de functionaliteit van SalesStep toegepast, zoals bij T-Mobile Nederland. Bij Fleetcor heeft hij inmiddels 30% sales-omzetgroei gerealiseerd over de afgelopen drie jaar. Dat is voor een deel toe te schrijven aan zijn ‘skillsbased’ aanpak. “Sales is te leren, maar je moet er wel aanleg voor hebben,” zo stelt hij.
CULTUURVARIANT
In het model van Cultuurbeïnvloeding is hier volgens het Arenamodel een ‘gedragsstrategie’ toegepast, oftewel kleinere gedragsinterventies, door uit te gaan van een uniform basisprofiel over de landen heen, met een gemeenschappelijk begrippenkader dat gaandeweg is gaan leven in de Europese sales teams. Het leidde tot inzicht op individueel en teamniveau en synergie tussen de landen, met betere resultaten tot gevolg.
“People are not your most important asset. The right people are.”
Jim Collins
What a resume doesn’t tell you about the sales candidates
A resume tells you something about a salesperson, but it does not show everything. A great resume in sales can say something about a candidate’s loyalty by looking at their tenure. You can also get an idea of their overall performance or attainment. But it is tough to get an indication of their future performance based on their working history unless you know three things:
What are their competencies and state of their Sales Mindset?
Would you buy from this person? Do you trust him?
What are their core drivers and motivators?
Together with our partner theNextSales, today we outline a better solution for uncovering those three aspects of your sales candidate and thus tackle this issue. Our joint solution consists of two proven successful tips:
1) an online sales assessment, whereby the sales candidate is asked to answer an extensive questionnaire early on in the recruitment process;
2) using video questionnaires as a means to demonstrate the candidate’s “true” skills in practice.
In the two paragraphs below, more insights will be shared into both parts of the solution and why they are relevant.
First tip: the use of an online sales assessment
The use of online assessments has skyrocketed in recent years. And within recruitment processes, assessments are too often used after the first or second interview (as a “sanity check”).
However, many candidates do not make it through the first selection round because they often do not have the right sector expertise or experience. We see this particularly in the sectors ICT, Finance and Manufacturing.
Our recommendation & observation:
1) It is more effective when hiring managers deploy online assessments earlier in the recruitment process. The best time to do this is just after the exploratory call but prior to the first round of interviews.
2) One benefit following from using assessments earlier in the recruitment process is that it allows hiring managers or recruiters to invite talented candidates who otherwise would have been outside of their scope due to specific requirements in the job description. For example the right education, sector expertise and or experience.
3) We see a remarkable number of what we call “Wild Card” candidates who are still successfully hired and onboarded. These Wild Card candidates can provide the answer to the challenge of the tight labor market.
Wild card candidates are therefore hidden gems who, based on their resume, often are not invited to an interview due to a lack of sector expertise but still have a lot of potential.
With the insights gained by a SalesStep assessment, it is a lot easier to identify and highlight these hidden gems. The assessments dig much deeper than the candidate’s resume by providing an extensive report on their Sales Drives, Motivational Drives, Sales Attitudes, Sales Skills, and development potential and ambition as well as Sales Mindset, which according to research, is more important than the level on experience in a similar job or the education level of the candidate. Furthermore, the light version of the SalesStep questionnaire – SalesStep-Select, takes as few as 15 minutes to complete, making it the perfect tool to use in the recruitment process (with high volume). Therefore, by implementing the online questionnaire SalesStep earlier in the recruitment process, hiring managers can gain deeper insights into the competencies and core drives of each candidate, thereby not missing wild card candidates or making wrong hires.
Second tip: the use of a video questionnaire
After a positive review of the SalesStep assessment and several candidates are selected, our next solution creates a modern alternative to the traditional hiring process. By providing a video questionnaire, we can more easily assess competencies and skills by seeing the competencies in practice. This will help the employer answer some questions before inviting someone for an interview. More importantly, it reduces the chance of a bad hire dramatically.
Sales competencies can easily be tested in the early stages by asking questions and providing small video assignments. Let us give you some examples of competencies that can be reviewed before meeting a candidate.
1 – Facilitation skills
Assignment: Make an intro, present the agenda and set the stage
How does a salesperson set the stage? Is the seller convincing in controlling the frame by selling the process first before asking questions or presenting something?
2 – Presentation skills
Assignment: Present our company in a storytelling way in under 2 minutes
Although a salesperson can practice a bit, you can’t fake a great presentation. Does the candidate know how to build a pitch and draw attention in the first 10 seconds? What technique is the seller using, and what is his vocabulary?
3 – Personality
Assignment: What would you do if…
Provide your candidate with a challenging situation with a fictional customer that is very demanding and is asking for more discounts. Ask him or her how he would solve this and why? This provides great insight into their personality
4 – Creativity
Assignment: Connection request
Show a LinkedIn profile of a famous CEO. Ask the seller to make a short video for this potential connection in 20 seconds and provide the candidate with some additional details about this person.
5 – Give energy
Would you be able to confidently say that this person is someone you would buy from? Of course not. Subconsciously you know before you know, and good energy is an invaluable asset for every seller. Especially in a digital era, it’s important to spice up your performance and increase the overall buying experience. With video, you will get a more complete impression.
Conclusion:
By presenting two tips, we have suggested an enhanced structure for the recruitment process that is more robust and future-proof. Implementing these will result in better hiring decisions, by reducing the number of wrong hires and increasing the number of candidates by successfully identifying Wild Card candidates.
A more elaborate presentation of our suggestions is illustrated in the graphic below:
Making a test is of all times. Whether it is to measure the market potential of a product or the sales qualities of your employees. Get in the fast lane with SalesStep!
Especially in these times tests and online surveys are used more, because many people work from home and work remotely on a daily basis.
SalesStep Online assessments for sales people and managers provide valuable insights at both individual and team level. SalesStep is especially suitable to compose and offer complete training and coaching programs that focus on the development of both Mindset and sales skills.
Useful for trainers and coaches
Accessible and easy
Relevant and effective
With the Teamviewer app, SalesStep has the tool to measure and report online an analysis of 23 relevant sales competencies in a team in order to provide very valuable insights that you can (and often must) work with immediately.
The advantage of online testing is that you work time and location independent. The test is provided online and can be done at any time. The debriefing and any coaching or training program can also be performed entirely via online video. In this way, sales reps save valuable travel time, allowing more time and attention to customers and prospects.
Now it is always important to have insight into the specific sales qualities of sales people, whether you want to know it yourself, as a sales manager or as a sales coach: insight into qualities and drives is a must to start with further development.
Get in the fast lane with SalesStep
Slowly the different markets start up again and everyone tries to get back to life as good as possible. This is difficult as we still have to stick to the measures. No more training sessions on location, for the time being no presentations for large groups and no personal conversation to discuss your competencies and pitfalls. For the time being, everyone is dependent on working from home and video conferencing.
For the traditional way of sales coaching and training this is very difficult, because how do you coach your sales teams from another location?
That's exactly where SalesStep helps you.
The SalesStep Online assessments can be used from home, instead of in a classroom. SalesStep offers an online assessment that can be done from home, giving you instant insight into development priorities. In this way, SalesStep provides a coaching agenda for the development of the Mindset, Attitudes and Skills. Especially the Mindset and Attitudes are very helpful in regular online coaching. In SalesStep for the account manager there are 13 and for the manager no less than 14 points that can be adressed in online coaching.
How does the SalesStep assessment work?
Our team, specialized in sales training, coaching and assessments, has developed a highly reliable and validated assessment to clearly identify your current sales talents and development priorities.
With this assessment we link back a score on 23 different sales competencies. These are skills, attitudes as well as drives that are relevant and recognizable for everyone in sales. Think for example of "Drive to Win", "Entrepreneurship" and "Result orientation" and hard skills such as "Closing skills".
After answering the online questionnaire of about 120 questions, you will be presented with a very clear dashboard where you can easily see all the scores per sales competence. The insights from this dashboard provide attention at management level which you can use to increase the effectiveness of sales people.
SalesStep is often used as a T-0 analysis to measure the "As-Is" of the sales team. SalesStep is therefore the starting point of development and gives a clear goal of 'what good looks like' after the training and coaching program (the T-1).
Because everything is substantiated with a lot of data and presented with Teamviewer, the development of sales competencies is quantifiable. For example, it becomes clear how much the sense of accountability has improved in % over the past year.
In addition to the dashboard, you will also receive a more extensive report in which we explain the values and competencies with a further analysis of the results. In addition, SalesStep describes how you can improve yourself. Start a development conversation with this report and let SalesStep work for you, as to measure is to know it!
In addition, SalesStep is very helpful in helping you to prepare for acquisition conversations and therefore very suitable to distinguish yourself facing prospects you have been trying to get in for a long time.
Would you like to use SalesStep to have a better answer on how to offer online coaching and training to your customers? Become a partner of our service now! We have extensive knowledge of sales and assessments and a network of partners to help you get even more out of your coaching and training! Word nu partner van onze dienst! Wij hebben een uitgebreide kennis van sales en assessments en een netwerk van partners om jou nog meer uit je coaching te laten halen!
