What is a Sales Manager Assessment?

The Sales Manager Assessment supports managers in driving sales performance by evaluating their salespeople's strengths and development areas in each stage of the sales process.

Sales Management is not merely about managing a sales team and providing support when needed. Sales coaching is arguably the most critical activity of the sale manager. A sales manager needs to understand where their sales team's strengths and weaknesses are to provide support to help drive sales performance.

An important role of a sales manager is to match their sales team members to steps in the sales process to help facilitate more sales and excellent sales performance. The Sales Manager Assessment provides managers with a competency-based approach to build a winning sales team. A report identifies the top sales competencies, mindsets, and roles of an individual and matches them to steps in the sales process that correspond to their strengths.

The Sales Manager Assessment reports on a salespersons ability to adapt to the main requirements of each step in the sales process. The sales process is broken into two separate sections, pre and post-sale. The pre-sale steps include lead evaluation, initial contact, needs exploration, and closing and negotiation. The post-sale steps include initial engagement, account management, and expansion.

The Sales Manager report pinpoints a salesperson's match at different sales process phases based on their current level of competence in the associated skillset. The report follows both pre and post-sale processes to help the manager understand their sales people's strengths, weaknesses, and development needs. At every stage of the sales process, the results reveal if the competencies are a strength, small strength, medium impact, small risk, or a risk.

The report supports managers and coaches to understand why some salespeople may lose their way when following the sales process. It also highlights areas in which salespeople need extra development. This development is vital to reaching success at each step in the sales process.
 

Sales Manager Assessment Questions

Answers from the Sales Competence Questionnaire form the basis of the Sales Manager Competence Assessment. Sales manager assessment questions are ipsative style, also known as a forced-choice questionnaire, meaning respondents are given a set of statements and select one.

Respondents have 99 statements to answer. Although the questionnaire does not have a time limit, we recommend respondents allow 30 minutes to answer all the questions.

The Sales Competence Questionnaire is explicitly designed for salespeople with a minimum of six months of sales experience. Some of the questions may be challenging for respondents to answer if they have never been in a sales role.

Sales Manager Assessment Answers

When completing the questionnaire, we recommend the respondents think of themselves in their current sales role. If the respondent is between jobs and completing the questionnaire for a recruitment situation, we recommend considering themselves in the previous sales role. Respondents are shown two statements in each question and asked to choose the one they feel describes them better. For example:

Think of yourself when selling. Of the two options, select the one that describes you better.

• I have the mindset of a hunter who is always looking for new business opportunities
• I am an impatient listener who likes to take the conversation forward

Respondents may find some of the questions challenging. If they feel neither of the statements describes them exactly, we recommend they pick the statement that is more like them. 

Sales Management: Sales Process

A sales process is an overview of an organisation's complete selling process from lead generation to closing and account management. A sales process includes several repeatable steps that a sales team takes to convert a prospect into a client. A sales process provides structure to the management and tracking of sales leads. A standardised sales process adds accountability to your sales team activities and leads to better efficiency, a higher win rate, and shorter sales cycle.

There is no ideal sales process. Every market, business and competitive situation require a different approach. The Sales Manager Assessment uses a widely accepted description of the sales process applicable to several industries and markets. The process used in this report works more like a general description of which you can take the elements that apply in your business. 

The Sales Manager Assessment identifies sales skills that will contribute to success in each part of the sales process. The sales manager assessment test further evaluates sales skills that may cause challenges at a specific step in the sales process. Effectively identifying these areas minimises weaknesses and provides coaching opportunities to build sales performance further. 

Although our in-built sales process is widely applicable to most businesses, we understand the unique discrepancies between industries and companies. Even between products! The powerful FinxS Online Platform provides customisation options to define your own sales process. Input your sales process into the system and define the areas you believe may strengthen or hinder each step in the sales process.