Assessing Development Needs to Improve Performance

Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, is quoted as saying “If you don’t know where you are going, any road will take you there.” The same sentiment could be applied to improving one’s job performance.

Knowing your current strengths and development needs is a necessary first step to performance improvement. While a variety of approaches might be used to acquire this information, one proven method for gaining this insight is to honestly complete a self-assessment about your job behavior or performance.

Honesty is key. If you complete a self-assessment with the intent of making yourself look better or worse than what you really are, the results will not help you improve. Results won’t point you down the right road.

Enter the Sales Manager Skills Assessment

The Sales Manager Skills Assessment is designed to provide specific information regarding your strengths and development needs as a sales manager and point you down the right road. Created from the ASTD World-Class Sales Competency Model, the assessment consists of 18 statements divided into three dimensions. The dimensions represent areas of expertise (AOEs) that were rated as having high importance for sales managers during the research study that created the model.

In addition to identifying AOEs, the study also identified a series of key actions associated with each AOE. The key actions represent critical behaviors and activities sales managers must perform in each AOE in order to carry out their role effectively, and form the basis for the 18 behavioral statements that comprise the Sales Manager Skills Assessment.

Scoring the Sales Manager Skills Assessment

Scoring and interpreting the Sales Manager Skills Assessment is easy and straightforward. Your overall score provides you with a general picture of how frequently you perform the critical behaviors and key activities associated with each of the three AOEs. This score will range between 126 (frequent use of the critical behaviors and key activities) and 18 (little to no use of the critical behaviors and key activities).

Your three dimension scores indicate how often you use the specific critical behaviors and activities associated with each dimension. Scores on each will range:

• between 35 (frequent use) and 5 (no use) for Setting Sales Strategy

• between 49 (frequent use) and 7 (no use) for Managing Within the Sales Ecosystem

• between 42 (frequent use) and 6 (no use) for Coaching for Sales Results.

A score ranges chart will help you interpret more accurately your overall and dimension scores. The chart categorizes all scores into the ranges of “strong,” “competent,” and “needs development.” Locate your scores on the chart and circle the range of numbers within which each of your scores fall. The overall column of the chart will help you better interpret your overall use of the critical behaviors and activities sales managers must perform in order to carry out their role effectively.

The AOE columns of the chart are designed to help you gain more specific insight into your strengths and development needs in each of the three areas. Scores that fall into the strong category either overall or on any of the three AOEs show that you use the behaviors and activities in these areas more than average and indicate a strength.

On the other hand, scores in either the competent or needs development categories, identify areas where there is room for improvement, with scores in the needs development category having the highest priority. These indicate the roads you should travel down to improve your job performance. 

Want to learn more about the most essential topics in learning and development and learning technologies? Check out the Core 4 Conference in Austin, TX this September. 

This post is based on content explored in the new ASTD Press release, The Art of Modern Sales Management, which covers everything you need to know to be a top sales manager! 

Sales management has changed dramatically in the past decade. With increasing globalization and many companies adding more virtual workers, the task of managing these diverse sales teams has become increasingly complicated. In a connected and evolving world it is hard to offer a definitive guide, but this book strives to sketch out a blueprint for managing performance in a changing sales landscape. 

Each chapter is written by a sales professional and thought leader, many with experience as both a salesperson and as a sales manager. Learn from their experience and utilize the action plans at the end of each chapter to grow into a better leader for your team, whether they are down the hall or across the world.