SalesAssessment.com sales role definitions
‘First Who . . . Then What. We expected that good to great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats – and then they figured out where to drive it. The old adage “people are your most important asset“ turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are.’
“Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … And Others Don’t” by Jim Collins.
Ensuring the right person is in the right role is a vital component of every organization’s talent management strategy: not only is this the key to optimizing the performance and return from your sales operations, it also facilitates retention of top talent.
Therefore, selecting the right role against which to assess each individual is essential in order to derive maximum value for your business from the Sales Talent Assessment process.
What do they mean ?
Not all sales roles are the same. For instance, Sales Managers requires an entirely different set of skills to perform in the role compared with the members of the teams they manage. A Strategic Selling role is fundamentally different in approach from Solution Selling, although both require high-caliber people.
Thus, each role demands its own specific set of competencies and skills.
We have listed below all the sales and sales management roles currently supported by SalesAssessment.com’s Sales Talent Assessment tool and associated analysis products.
What are the bands ?
Our sales role definitions are divided into four bands, reflecting the complexity of the assessment, analysis and feedback required for each role as well as their value to the employing organization.
The Sales Leader role is in Band 1.
The Sales Manager role is in Band 2.
Band 3 includes all the more complex selling roles, with the remainder falling into Band 4.
Many of our clients have a complex mix of different roles within their sales organizations and their precise assessment needs vary over time. Clients often find it beneficial to purchase Sales Talent Assessments by the relevant band, subsequently calling off the specific role assessments as and when required.
Sales Leadership & Management roles
Sales Leader
As the figurehead, visionary and driver of strategy across an entire sales organization, the Sales Leader fulfills a unique role with responsibility for agreeing and delivering revenue targets and accountability to the rest of the business. This role involves a deep understanding of the evolving marketplace and the ability to translate vision and strategy into effective action on the part of the sales organization, facilitated by consummate communications and people skills which maximize performance from colleagues.
Sales Manager
The role of Sales Manager is pivotal to business success, yet is typically one of the least understood roles within an organization’s sales structure. Strictly a management rather than a ‘super-salesperson’ role, the Sales Manager is responsible for critical decisions regarding hiring, developing, coaching and controlling the focus, direction and performance of the sales team, while also engaging with other strategic areas of the business.
Channel Management roles
Enterprise Channel Manager
The Enterprise Channel Manager is responsible for engaging with business leaders in larger or more significant channel partners and for developing a high-level partner engagement based on achieving mutual, long-term, business success.
Account Management roles
Key Account Manager
Key Account Manager (KAM) is one of the most critical roles for any organization and offers long-term potential for delivering substantial revenue gains and maximizing retention of the most important clients. Note that this proactive role is a significant step change from Account Manager, and can only effectively be filled by high-caliber individuals capable of delivering a complex mix of sales and business skills while operating comfortably at C suite level.
Account Manager
The role of an Account Manager is to engage at C suite level to proactively retain and develop existing client relationships and income from a portfolio of significant clients, and also to develop and grow new client relationships. An Account Manager is expected to manage a client portfolio in order to maximize the long-term mutual value of the relationship for both parties.
Sales Account Manager
The role of a Sales Account Manager is to proactively retain and develop business across a wide portfolio of typically smaller clients – while also identifying new clients as necessary – with a focus on maximizing the revenue from each client by developing appropriate relationships within the client, and finding new and innovative ways to continually enhance the clients’ preference to buy from them, rather than from any other source.
Internal Account Manager
The role of an Internal Account Manager is to proactively retain and develop existing client relationships and income from a portfolio of nominated clients and develop and grow new client relationships or expand relationships within the client as appropriate. An Internal Account manager would be expected to manage the client portfolio in order to maximize the long-term mutual value of the relationship for both parties by providing prompt and knowledgeable support and guidance, becoming the ‘go-to’ resource and primary point of contact within the company.
Business Development roles
Business Development Manager
The role of Business Development Manager requires the ability to understand, interpret and deploy in the field, go-to-market strategies with the objective of entering new markets, expanding coverage across less familiar areas of existing markets, or launching new offerings. This requires the skills of a senior sales person, with additionally, a well-developed ability to adapt positioning, negotiating, objection-handling, closing and customer-engagement approaches dynamically, during the ‘trial-and-error’ phase of developing the go-to-market strategy.
Field Sales roles
Strategic Selling
Operating at C suite level, Strategic Selling delivers the potential for significant revenue gains but is one of the most complex proactive sales approaches and requires skills more akin to those of a business analyst than classic salesmanship. Fundamentally different from Solution Selling, the Strategic Selling role demands the ability to proactively identify and position, for the customer, a way forward in the face of a current or imminent business problem, where the customer has yet to identify how to resolve it
Solution Selling
Solution Selling is the most complex form of reactive or customer needs-based selling. Operating at C suite level, it encompasses the ability to craft for customers a complete, high-level and complex solution to meet a customer business need where the way forward for the business has already been determined by the customer.
Application Selling
Occurring at many levels within the customer, Application Selling is the ability to identify opportunities within which to position an existing, fixed-scope, yet configurable, offering that delivers a ‘defined outcome’ for the customer to meet a ‘defined need’. This can be sold directly to the customer as a stand-alone application (eg an accounting system) or through others as part of a more complex solution (eg a just-in time manufacturing solution).
Transactional Selling
Transactional Selling is the ability to identify opportunities within which to position a fully functionally defined, stand-alone component. As components tend not to deliver ‘end-user’ functionality in themselves, a Transactional Sale usually involves technical integration of a component into an application along with justification of why it will perform better than another. Hence, Transactional Selling usually occurs at the ‘technical’ and ‘procurement’ levels.
Contact Center Sales roles
Contact Center Selling (outbound)
Contact Center Selling (outbound) encompasses all aspects of effective and professional sales techniques, delivered over the phone and via e-media to identify new business prospects within a given remit and move prospects along a defined sales process to an appropriate conclusion.
Contact Center Selling (inbound)
Contact Center Selling (inbound) requires the ability to engage quickly and effectively with all types of caller, create rapport and to use effective and professional sales techniques – over the phone and via e-media – to gain an understanding of the caller’s needs, requirements and desires and, to quickly identify what actions it would be appropriate to take to move the opportunity towards a sale, meeting, or other relevant outcome.
Retail Sales roles
Automotive Retail Sales
In order to deliver the lifestyle aspirations inherent in the automotive marketplace, the Automotive Retail Sales role requires the use of professional sales techniques – in a showroom, over the phone and via e-media – to identify and engage with customers and prospects to deliver a specific brand proposition. This involves qualifying the prospect and opportunity according to company or marketing guidelines while effectively communicating the offering, then moving through a defined sales process to an appropriate conclusion, and ensuring contact with previous customers to maintain the association with the brand.
Retail Sales Consultant
When consumers go into a store today they expect the shopping experience to deliver significantly more than they can get through ‘shopping the web’; indeed, they expect Retail Sales Consultants to be able to interpret, understand and act on their aspirations, needs and desires in such a way as to create customer delight with each and every engagement.
