Role Descriptions for Skills Tests
Sales Management Roles
Definition of First Line Sales Manager
The Role of First Line Sales Manager (FLSM) is pivotal to business success today, yet is often one of the least understood roles within an organization’s sales structure. Responsible for critical decisions regarding hiring, developing, coaching and controlling the focus, direction and performance of the sales team, as well as being expected to provide vital input to a number of strategic business areas, many FLSM’s are in roles for which they are often ill prepared today.
With the ever increasing expectation of customers and the resulting need for constant change in operating approaches and engagement strategies within sales forces, the FLSM has a vital job to perform for organizations. Sitting within the overall Sales Management career stream, the FLSM would typically also provide input to and support for Strategy & Planning, Performance Management, Quality Improvement, Change Management and, Corporate Governance.
To be successful in this critical role, a FLSM will need the capabilities to work effectively in three different and distinct ‘functions’ within the scope of the role. These include the following:
Selling Management, which comprises –- Opportunity Planning
- Territory Planning
- Quota Management
- Customer Engagement Planning and Process
- Pipeline Management
- Forecasting
- Business Acumen
- Organizational Awareness
- Relationship Management
- Financial management
- Resource Planning
- Recruiting
- Hiring
- On boarding
- Training
- Coaching
- Retention
- Leadership
Please note: This Fit-4 focuses specifically on the skills required to operate as a First Line Sales Manager. Should you wish to also assess the candidate’s relevant selling skills, there is a small additional sales skills test available for each released Fit-4 sales role.
Indirect Sales Roles
Definition of Alliance Partner Director
The Role of Alliance Partner Director is one of the most complex and demanding roles in sales. Dealing with the very largest, most complex and strategic third party relationships, this role is about developing incremental, long term revenue streams that frequently overlay existing sales relationships. This is achieved through engaging at very senior levels within own and Alliance Partner’s business to facilitate and drive the creation of new and more wide ranging business offerings for typically large enterprise clients than would have been possible from either party’s own capabilities alone.
It is now well recognized that selecting the most appropriate alliance partners and engaging with and motivating these partner relationships effectively is a key issue organizations must address in order to engage with large enterprise customers at very senior levels. The problems and opportunities associated with this role are becoming more complex as the range and complexity of customer needs increases and the rate of change of customer needs accelerates, driven by ever more diverse market demands and ever more dynamic routes to market.
To be successful in this complex role, candidates need wide ranging business, marketing, and sales skills, together with a good grasp of their target markets’ preferred buying patterns, the dynamics driving change in those buying patterns and the skills to adapt their business plans to cope with constant evolution and occasional revolution in the partner network.
Candidates for Alliance and Partner Director Roles require a very wide range of capabilities including the ability to:
- Understand intimately the mutual target market that is being addressed
- Understand the psychology of the relationships between company and alliance partner stakeholders
- Understand the purpose of using alliance partners; the range of alliance partners available; and the appropriateness of each type of alliance partner for the target market
- Craft a strategy and deploy an appropriate plan that maximises the market opportunity for all relevant stakeholders
- Understand and manage alliance partner, company and cultural conflicts, creating outcomes where the benefits are optimized for all stakeholders
- Be comfortable talking the language of business with senior business managers internally and also with those in alliance partners and customers
- Be an Ambassador for your organisation’s business approach and have sufficient Gravitas to develop relationships with senior business managers internally and in the alliance partners
- Be cognizant and comfortable with financial measures
- Manage the overall strategic engagement to realize revenue and profit objectives
- Motivate all alliance partners’ and own company teams effectively
Definition of Enterprise Channel Manager
Enterprise Channel Manager is a critical role for organizations who sell through indirect channel partners and requires both good sales skills, but also some level of management and organizational skills. It is defined as: the ability to manage your company’s relationships with a portfolio of independent business partners to achieve all relevant sales and marketing targets and to achieve all associated Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s).
This involves understanding the business dynamics of the channel partners and of own company and the ability to create a ‘win-win’ situation for both parties, with each channel; it also requires the ability to recognize when this is not possible and, diplomacy and tact to deal with the consequential changes that would be required in the channel structure.
Candidates for Enterprise Channel Manager role require a wide range of capabilities to perform the role, including the following:
- Deliver Sales and Marketing targets and KPI’s from nominated channel partners
- Develop revenue growth plans with each channel that underpin own company strategy and set and agree targets and KPI’s
- Work with channel partners to deliver results from specific Marketing initiatives
- Build strong strategic and operational relationships with each channel partner
- Lead, coach and develop sales teams within channel partners
- Grow a wide and broad support network across all stakeholder groups and act as a catalyst, facilitating delivery of key initiatives through virtual teams
- Manage the delivery of a differentiated experience for channel partners and end customers
- Identify and grow new channel partners providing business development support and expert advice
- Be bold, yet tactful enough to close down relationships with failing channels in a way that does not impact negatively on remaining channels or own company
Account Manager Roles
Definition of Key Account Manager
Key Account Manager (KAM) is one of the most critical roles for any organization and requires a complex mix of sales and business skills. The adoption of a good KAM strategy offers many organizations the best opportunity to maximize the revenue potential of their most important customers.
This involves detailed research and analysis of the dynamics within the key account and of their market, as well as the ability to demonstrate how and by what means the relationships will enhance over time the Net Present Value (future free cash flow) for both organizations
Candidates for Key Account Manager roles require a wide range of capabilities to perform this role including the ability to:
- Identify and prioritize key accounts and measure their profitability
- Develop a deep understanding of the customer
- Craft customer focused strategies
- Create offering models for key accounts
- Build appropriate relationships and communicate effectively
- Develop clear commercial strategies
- Manage conflict
- Deploy effective negotiating and selling strategies in the key account and internally
Definition of an Account Manager
The Role of an Account Manager is to proactively retain and develop the client relationships and income from a wide portfolio of nominated clients and, manage the portfolio in such a way as to maximise the long-term mutual value of the relationship for both parties.
The role involves the ability to identify, define and present propositions that evidence mutual value to senior management, both in the client and in own company, as well as having the ability to understand and drive towards the achievement of pre-defined Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s). Skills and experience in managing projects, campaigns, co-ordination of team members, developing timelines and setting deadlines in order to achieve client and own company objectives, will also be required.
Candidates for an Account Manager role will require an above average set of skills including specifically the ability to do the following:
- Quickly gain an understanding of a client account, identifying the way they work, what they expect from the company and, what opportunities exist in the client for the company’s offerings
- Align the company’s KPI’s against the client’s expectations and needs and develop a structured account plan to achieve all goals and targets
- Establish close relationships with client stakeholders and own company stakeholders, communicating goals, objectives and timelines clearly
- Actively seek to grow business within each client for mutual benefit
- Manage expectations of all stakeholders using highly developed communication, listening, questioning and reporting skills
- Be able to analyse results, explain variances and update account plans, in accordance with changing conditions found at any time
- Develop and manage project plans to deliver results and improve customer satisfaction
Business Development Roles
Definition of Business Development Director
The Role of Business Development Director is a senior business role, requiring a highly skilled and experienced person with a profile that evidences their ability to operate in a role that is a complex hybrid of a business manager, a senior sales role and a strategic marketing role.
The objective of this role is to proactively develop new business, often in new markets, areas of the current market that are less familiar to the company, or to develop strategies for success with new offerings, that all meet profit, service and other company objectives.
Skills required to be successful in this role include a significant number of those expected of a senior sales person (typically a Solution Sales person), with additionally, certain strategic marketing skills, particularly those marketing abilities required to analyse customer, business, or market trends and, from these, formulate new strategies to win additional business. Further complicating this already demanding role is the requirement for a certain number of business skills, particularly in the areas of financial performance management, P&L management and risk management. These are the key skills areas which will be required by individual’s setting out to develop net new areas of opportunity for their company.
Candidates for a Business Development Director role require a range of capabilities to enable them to successfully perform this role, including the ability to:
- Evidence a sound understanding of Strategic Analysis, Risk Analysis and Business Assurance systems
- Demonstrate good financial acumen and have experience of managing P&L accounts
- Capitalize on their good knowledge of the commercial marketplace in which they operate
- Analyze trends and use the outputs to formulate appropriate business winning strategies
- Display effective management skills
- Show excellent presentation skills, as well as verbal and non-verbal communication skills
Definition of Business Development Manager
The Role of Business Development Manager requires the ability to understand, interpret and deploy in the field, go-to-market strategies that have been created by others, with the objective of the company 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.
The purpose of this role is to proactively develop new business streams in markets or market areas that are less familiar to the company currently, or for new offerings, whilst meeting profit, service and other company objectives. Skills are required to be at a level above and beyond those of a senior sales person (typically a Solution Sales person) and, to enable success in this role, would particularly include increased skill levels, awareness and understanding of:- positioning; negotiating; communicating; presenting; adapting approach to meet customer needs; overcoming objections; reporting; and closing. Further skills would be required to analyse the findings from these engagements and provide input towards developing and evolving the approaches defined in the go-to-market strategy for winning additional business.
Candidates for a Business Development Manager role require a range of capabilities to enable them to successfully perform this role, including the ability to:
- Evidence a strong set of Solution Sales skills, but with specific skill areas in customer engagement and communication being shown to be at an advanced stage of development
- Demonstrate a strong ability to ‘think on their feet’
- Capitalize on their good knowledge of the company’s current marketplace and offering set
- Evidence a natural ability to take onboard new ideas, easily able to integrate them into their current sales approach
- Analyze results from each customer engagement and structure the output to enable the adaptation of existing or formulation of new business winning strategies
- Display effective management skills
- Show excellent presentation skills, as well as verbal and non-verbal communication skills
Sales Roles
Definition of Strategic Sales
Strategic Sales is one of the most complex sales approaches and requires skills more akin to those of a business analyst than those of classic salesmanship. It is defined as: the ability to proactively identify and position, for the customer, a way forward to a current or imminent business problem, where the customer has yet to identify how to resolve this business problem.
This involves sophisticated research and analysis of the dynamics in the customer’s marketplace, together with the current customer situation to uncover and understand significant market drivers requiring a key business response.
With the aims of:
- 1) Alerting the customer to challenges over the horizon
- 2) Defining with the customer the potential business impacts of those challenges
- 3) Crafting joint options and solutions that can be implemented successfully to obviate these defined problems. This will involve your company’s capabilities/offerings and may also require integration of third party components to achieve a complete solution.
Candidates for Strategic Sales roles require a range of capabilities to perform this role including the ability to:
- Research and analyze the customer’s marketplace and customer situation
- Identify current and impending customer business problems from the market data
- Select capabilities required to address identified business problem(s) with the widest possible scope
- Propose to the customer executive team a solution package that not only addresses the current or impending business problem but also creates competitive advantage for the customer’s business
- Engage others outside of direct responsibility, such as partners, in the development of the proposition so that it increases real and perceived value delivered
- Develop and track a set of metrics (probably financial) to demonstrate sustained success over time
- Create a relationship with the customer whereby future business is assured and current successes can be fully leveraged in attracting other customers
- Capitalize the business value created for maximum mutual long-term business benefit
Definition of Solution Sales
Solution Sales is the most complex form of customer need-based selling. It is 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. Often the customer is without clarity as to how he will move forward – solution selling provides the “how.” Solution sales develops answers to meet complex customer needs and sometimes incorporates the offerings of others, where appropriate. The solution selling premise is that customers may know in principle what they need, but they may not have all the capabilities to pull a solution together and deliver a high-impact business outcome.
Candidates require a range of capabilities to perform this role including the ability to:
- Identify customer needs early in the buying cycle
- Determine what is required to fulfil the need
- Source capabilities required to meet the need
- Enlist partners where own organization is missing capabilities
- Oversee development of the solution
- Deliver a business proposition to the customer’s senior management
- Close the sale
Definition of Application Sales
Application Sales is defined as: the ability to identify opportunities within which to position an existing, fixed-scope and 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 (e.g. an accounting system) or through others as part of a more complex solution. Application Sales occurs at many levels within the customer. The level at which a sale takes place is frequently dependent on the cost and complexity of the application being sold.
Candidates require a range of capabilities to perform this role including the ability to:
- Prospect vigorously to identify opportunities
- Identify the customer’s need at a functional level
- Evaluate how well own offering meets customer need
- Build competitive analysis showing own offering in favorable light
- Locate and access decision makers
- Construct a cost/benefit equation for own offering
- Close the sale
Definition of Transactional Sales
Transactional Sales is defined as: the ability to identify opportunities within which to position a fully functionally defined, stand-alone component. Components in themselves usually do not deliver ‘end user’ functionality. Hence, a Transactional Sale is much more about the technical integration of a component into an application coupled with justification as to why the seller’s component will perform better than another. Transactional Sales usually occurs at the ‘technical’ and ‘procurement’ levels.
Candidates require a range of capabilities to perform this role including the ability to:
- Prospect vigorously to identify opportunities
- Identify application areas within which the component could contribute value
- Apply a high level of technical competence
- Determine how much application benefit would result from use of component
- Build competitive analysis showing own component in favorable light
- Locate and access decision makers
- Close the sale
Contact Centre Roles
Definition of a contact Centre Sales Role
Contact Centre Sales is defined as: the ability to use effective and professional sales techniques, over the phone and via e-media to identify new business prospects within a given remit; qualify the prospect and the opportunity according to company or marketing guidelines; effectively communicate the offering appropriately, in terms and in a way that is comfortable and relevant for the prospect; handle objections through active listening and objection handling techniques; close either the sale if appropriate, or alternatively, a meeting for a field based representative with the prospect; report effectively on Key performance Indicators (KPI’s) achieved for all relevant stakeholders.
Candidates require a range of capabilities to perform this role including the ability to:
- Prospect vigorously to identify opportunities directly on the phone, or generate call backs, from other own, or company lead generation activities
- Work in a fast paced environment, yet still deploy effective and professional sales techniques to engage and qualify prospects
- Use accurate and reliable qualification approaches, techniques and tools to minimise wasted sales time and maximise number of prospects
- Communicate well with prospects, in an engaging way, using language, terms and a style that is both familiar and comfortable to them
- Handle objections through appropriate use of active listening and objection handling techniques
- Close sales, or meetings, as appropriate
- Report effectively for and to all relevant stakeholders on performance against Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) as may be required from time to time
