How well are your sales people doing with regard to those KSAs?

by Susanne Ball

Last week we posed a few questions to consider when getting customer input as you're determining how best to develop your sales people. When asking for input, it's absolutely critical that you ask the right questions. And, those questions should be: 

1. What key knowledge, skills and abilities (KSAs) sales people bring to the table are important to the customer
2. How well your sales people are doing relative to those KSA's
3. How well your sales people are doing  on those KSAs relative to your competitors' sales people

This week, let's consider question 2. So here are a few things to think about - things I've learned from experience in conducting customer input activities on behalf of our clients:

1. Third parties are better at getting candid customer input
   Customers are significantly more comfortable, more open and honest, and more talkative when a third party conducts the survey. That's not surprising - they don't really want to say something bad about their sales rep to the sales rep's face (if that's who's asking the questions) or to someone in their vendor organization. In fact, the sales rep should be the absolute last person to ask the questions. The second choice: A person from your organization who is in no way connected to Sales.
2. Electronic vs. personal questions
   Given how busy everyone's schedule is and how notoriously difficult it is to get on buyer calendars, it won't surprise you that most customers/buyers prefer to complete electronic surveys than agree to a face-to-face or phone interview. Here are the differences to consider when you decide which route to go:
   > Electronic surveys tend to have significantly higher participation rates
   > In-person or phone interviews tend to have greater depth of feedback (most respondents really don't take much time to fill out those "any other comments" sections in a meaningful way vs. what they'll tell you impromptu)
3. Ask the right questions
   Once you have your organization's KSAs, don't forget to ask only about the appropriate KSAs when taking up a customer's time. Those that are appropriate:
   > Externally focused KSAs that involve an interaction with the customer
   > KSA's the customers can see demonstrated and make a judgment about.
4. Ask the questions the right way
   Wording is everything. Make sure you word questions so the customer can respond based on behavior/experience with your sales people. For example, don't ask "How good are our sales rep's creative thinking skills?" -- they don't really care and don't know. Ask what they care about instead: "Does our sales rep bring you new/innovative ideas to help you grow your business?"
5. Ask the right number of questions
   Don't strain your customer's patience - give some serious thought to how much time and effort the customer will need to commit to your questions. You shouldn't expect more than approximately 10 minutes under most circumstances. So, be selective about your questions to get the core information you need.
6. Give them a scale
   A scale of 1 to 5 works best. 1 to 3 isn't enough differentiation for you to judge performance - I'd put money on your ending up with a 2 across the board. A scale of 1 to 10 is too much nuance - what's the actual difference between a 6 and 7 average score????
7. Ensure anonymity of responses - and mean it!
   This is the surest way to get candid input - and a 3rd party is the best way to ensure customers believe their responses will be anonymous.
8. Beware the fallout or halo effect
   True story: I was recently conducting a customer survey for a client. All was going well. Suddenly, ALL responses to questions turned extremely negative and many previously scheduled respondents backed out of the survey. What happened??? Well, the vendor had just had a major logistics issue and couldn't ship product as expected. The vendor's anger was reflected in the survey - despite the fact that the sales rep had done absolutely nothing different and the logistics issue was not her fault. The opposite can of course be true as well: a customer is extremely happy with your product or service despite your sales rep and, therefore, rates your sales rep's KSA performance higher than it actually is. A customer will take the entire relationship with your company into consideration when you're questioning them - so a word of caution about knowing "what else" in the relationship is influencing participation or the way your customer responds. Careful questioning and asking questions a few different ways may help.

Next week, let's tackle question 3.

THE QUESTIONS FOR YOU:
What are your experiences getting customer input on KSA performance? What pitfalls or advice can you share?