HOW TO IMPROVE SALES – FORTUNE 50 COMPANY FINDS NATURAL TALENT IS CRUCIAL TO SUCCESS
– CASE STUDY
THE CHALLENGE
Low employee engagement at a previously successful sales division of a Fortune 50 B2B company had become a problem. The sales team was no longer reaching its new account targets. Management tried to fix the situation by changing the commission system and offering new rewards for success. But the decline continued.
THE SOLUTION
OND was asked to analyze what had gone wrong and develop a plan to bring the division back on track.
OND first carried out a discovery exercise to reveal the sales team’s natural strengths and talents – or ‘Intellects’ as they are called in Method Teaming® language – using a unique set of psychometric instruments. The results were plotted onto the all-revealing Method Teaming Team Icon. Then OND compared each individual’s sales role and performance against their Intellect. The results were immediately apparent. The best performers were clustered within one specific Intellect, the EQ. Note that EQs typically make the best sales people. They have huge drive and are very competitive.
Next OND guided the sales leadership team through an analysis to identify seven talent-based attributes (not learned skills) that correlate to the high job performance needed for a salesperson. In doing this, OND ensured that that these talents could genuinely be found in a normal human being, not a superman or superwoman.
The talent acquisition process could now begin. With these attributes to hand, OND created a Method Teaming Target Profile and a Method Teaming Interview Template to use for finding and hiring candidates whose Intellect Profile placed them squarely within the top performers’ target “zip code”. Sales leadership immediately began using the Interview Template as an integral component in their search process. A narrow pool of candidates was found to have Intellect Profiles with a strong match to the target Intellect. Those who also met the experience requirements were immediately hired.
THE OUTCOME
Human capital management as revealed in employee engagement and retention statistics has skyrocketed. The client’s sales leadership has reported significant success as a result of hiring candidates who not only met the experience requirements but also had profiles falling within the target Intellect zip code. In addition, sales leadership reports that the Method Teaming Interview Template was a much more powerful tool to identify candidates who had the talent needed to perform at high levels, than any traditional assessment.
The Fortune 50 company has subsequently achieved extraordinary success:
- It has improved sales dramatically and regained its top industry reputation
- It has been consistently over target in every quarter since OND’s involvement
- It continues to use Method Teaming for all sales hiring
- It is expanding the use of Method Teaming to include non-sales divisions
