When Sales Leaders Don’t Lead With Their Strengths

Today I received a request for all of my articles to date which reference Objective Management Group’s Sales VP/Director Assessment.  I conducted a quick search and found – what?  None!  Out of nearly 1,000 articles, I hadn’t referenced OMG’s Sales VP/Director Assessment even once!  I’ll fix that right now.

Unlike our sales and sales management assessments, which are usually performed as part of a sales force evaluation at the request of an executive, most VP assessments are requested by the VP’s themselves.  There are some pretty interesting components to it, so I’ll discuss some of the more intriguing ones here.

Compared with a sales management assessment, where the sales manager must be tactical, the VP must be more strategic, so we have a Strategic Thinking dimension.  Our VP assessment also integrates a component of our Leadership Assessment, the Key Management Dynamics, where we can determine how well the VP has developed the Strategy Style, one of the nine Leadership Styles which we measure.

We also measure and identify the sales VP’s tendency to default to any of eight competencies over the others when they need to grow revenue.  It becomes interesting when a VP scores high in one competency but defaults instead to a different competency (one where they scored lower) to drive revenue.  And isn’t it powerful to finally be aware of that, learn why, and change?  When sales leaders default to a competency that isn’t their best, they can become frustrated when the desired changes and revenue do not occur.  Not only that, when they aren’t aware of a skill gap in the competency they chose, it can alienate sales managers and salespeople.  For instance, when a sales leader scores high in Coaching and low in Motivation and chooses to fire up the sales team to grow sales, it will not work as effectively as if coaching had been chosen.

When VP’s request this assessment, they can use it as a self-coaching tool or as a coaching road map by an outside sales leader.  But more than a self-development tool, it explains the strengths which are supporting sales leadership excellence, points out the weaknesses which may be responsible for not driving sales and growing salespeople (at their current or prior companies) to achieve their fullest potential.

If you are interested in getting yourself evaluated as a Sales VP or Director, just send me an email and I’ll make sure that one of my experts contacts you ASAP.