Why Use a Sales Competency Model?
Sales organizations can experience numerous benefits from implementing a sales competency framework:
- Clarify business objectives: A sales competency model will empower management to align your sales team around common goals and strategies to achieve them.
- Evaluate sales team members:Your sales competency framework will be a precise tool to measure performance, determine key areas for improvement and develop effective sales coaching strategies.
- Boost employee engagement:Your staff will have a greater understanding of what it takes to be an ideal sales professional. As a result, they’ll be more invested in their personal growth.
- Recruit ideal candidates: A sales competency model can extend to your external hiring processes to help you narrow application fields to the most compatible candidates.
- Increase revenue:Establishing a clear sales competency framework by which you evaluate candidates, train employees and assess performance will result in a more effective sales team. Your business will have the structure it needs to drive conversions at peak efficiency.
Sales Competency Model Framework
Most competency models contain skills and behaviors specific to a particular job role or function. Others contain foundational guiding competencies that are common to every job. The most common sales competency model framework includes the following:
Core Competencies ⇒ Skills ⇒ Observable Behaviors.
Core Competencies
Core competencies are the essential characteristics and knowledge someone must have to perform well in their position. These elements are the foundation of a sales competency model. Core sales competencies may include communication, organization, critical thinking or essential industry knowledge.
Skills and Proficiency Levels
Skills are the tasks and activities to which the competencies apply. If communication is the competency, then the ability to deliver a sales pitch that follows the company’s guidelines is the skill. Most models classify skills into three different proficiency levels, for example:
- Threshold: A seller demonstrates a solid understanding of the target skill but requires additional training to be able to perform as fully expected.
- Fully Functional: A seller understands the skill, leverages the skill to enhance their performance and is performing as expected.
- Expert: A seller has fully mastered the skill and acts as a consultant/teacher to others.
As sellers progress through the levels of proficiency, companies expect them to have mastered all of the traits in the preceding level.
Observable Behaviors
Observable behaviors are the instances that demonstrate whether an employee adequately performs the skill. A sales competency model can assess behaviors in terms of optimal, suboptimal and worst behaviors.
If the skill is delivering a sales pitch within company guidelines, optimal behavior could be following the guidelines with complete accuracy and converting a sale. Suboptimal behavior may be following most of the guidelines and either succeeding or failing to make a sale. The worst behavior would be abandoning the guidelines and failing to convert the lead.
Although organizations customize competency models to reflect their sales strategy and talent needs, most follow a similar structure. The example below demonstrates how a single competency can be translated into specific skills and measurable behaviors.
| Competency | Skill | Observable Behavior Example |
| Communication | Deliver sales pitch | Presents approved messaging clearly and effectively |
| Critical Thinking | Qualify opportunities | Identifies customer needs, priorities and buying criteria |
| Industry Knowledge | Align solutions to customer needs | Connects product capabilities to industry-specific challenges |
Benefits of Using a Sales Competency Model
Competency models help recruitment teams hire the right talent and equip leaders to gauge employee performance. Use sales competency models to:
- Improve sales performance:Hire the prospects best equipped to succeed, then use concrete metrics to gauge which employees need help reaching performance goals.
- Increase revenue:Fill your team with high-achieving salespeople who drive revenue growth.
Foster employee engagement: Build a staff of individuals who appreciate your organization’s values and want to further the collective goal. These employees will recognize and exhibit the desired behaviors for their roles.
Build a Sales Competency Model
Competency models drive performance within any internal department. Your organization can develop sales competency models for every role using the following steps:
- Research competency standards:Inspect other sales competency models for similar positions to gauge the standards that top performers meet and determine identifiers indicating a need for improvement.
- Interview competent performers:Speak with executives, managers and top performers to understand their thoughts on the skills and traits that indicate competency as a member of the organization and within a specific role.
- Develop basic competencies:Use what you’ve learned to formulate competencies that reflect the traits, skills, behaviors and other baseline indicators that foretell success as a member of the company.
- Develop job-specific competencies: Outline the skills, behaviors and performance metrics that indicate expected performance within specific roles. Your organization can set job-specific competencies for employees at every level, from new and seasoned sales reps to sales management.
While competency models share a common structure, the competencies themselves should reflect the responsibilities and success factors of each role. Take a look at how competencies may vary across common sales positions.
| Sales Role | Sales Representative Competencies |
| Sales Development Representative | Prospecting, communication, qualification, time management |
| Account Executive | Discovery, value-based selling, negotiation, opportunity management |
| Account Manager | Relationship management, account planning, cross-sell and upsell execution, customer retention |
| Sales Manager | Coaching, forecasting, pipeline management, talent development |
| Sales Leader | Commercial strategy, organizational leadership, change leadership, performance management |
Organizations should tailor competency models to the specific skills, behaviors and business outcomes expected of each role.
Using Sales Competency Models to Transform Your Organization
During a major sales transformation, organizations face the challenge of filling newly designed sales roles. This may involve moving people from existing roles within the organization or hiring from outside. A sales competency model can aid in both situations.
The first step is to create a competency model for all new sales roles. If an existing sales competency model exists, it can serve as a starting point. Then, a cross-functional sales leadership team must work together to identify the desired skills and behaviors for the new sales roles.
Use the sales competency model in two ways: Assess existing talent for fit in the new roles and help develop behavioral interview questions for new hires.
1. Assessing Existing Talent
Rank the level of proficiency for each skill required for success, for each incumbent. Some companies use a weighted average when some skills are more critical than others. Rank the incumbents to identify who might be the best fit for a particular role. In addition, look at the overall averages for each skill. This helps identify competency gaps that can be improved through sales training.
2. Create Behavioral Interview Questions
Use the sales competency model to create an interview guide tailored to the skills required for the new sales roles. For example, if a skill is “Align solutions with customer needs,” an interview question might be “Describe a time when a company required you to prove the value of a product or solution; what techniques did you use?” The answers to these behavioral questions will help identify strong candidates for the new roles.
