I recently parked my own sales consulting business to take on a senior leadership role at SHL – a company that I used to work for a few years ago. Despite the fact that I was enjoying the flexibility of running my own business and experiencing the ‘Tranquility of Solitude”, the prospect of a Managing Director role with SHL was made all the more enticing due to the fact they have recently been purchased by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB). As I have written about in this blog before, the research done by the CEB’s Sales Executive Council (SEC) around the best practices used by the best sales reps in the world deserves merit and further inspection. Especially when you are looking to hire a sales rep with this research in mind.
CEB & SHL : understanding the relationship between behaviours and talent
What are the qualities to look for when you need to hire a sales superstar? Conventional wisdom says look for the candidate with a strong ability to ‘build relationships’. Conventional wisdom is wrong. And as we know, the focus on ‘relationship building’ is incredibly broad.
The need to understand the behaviors top-performing sales reps demonstrate that their average-performing counterparts do not drove an exhaustive study of thousands of sales reps by CEB. Uncovered was a fascinating and valuable profile of the critical competencies possessed by sales high-achievers. CEB calls the sales high- achiever the Challenger Rep®. And this is what to look for when designing selection process.
The Challenger
I will be picking this up in more detail over the coming weeks. Understanding the critical competencies and behaviours associated with this role fits in with the theme of the ‘Sales Performance Improvement‘ blog – and should provide compelling reading. Please stay tuned.
In the meantime, please do join us for a webinar on January 31st – “The Challenger: The new rules for identifying top talent” This is the first webinar of its kind to look at the Challenger Sales Role and how you go about identifying the traits that lead to success in the recruitment process.
Register Now
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