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Talent Management
- A Most Costly Mistake – Three Tips for Hiring Success
- Developing Today’s Sales Managers
- Focus on Your High Performers
- How Can I Improve My Chances of Hiring the Right Salesperson?
- Passion, Priority, and Performance
- Recognizing Talent and Realizing its Potential
- The Three P’s of Performance – How to Uncover Each
- What's the Cost of a Misfit Sales Manager?
- Why Doesn’t My New Salesperson Get It?
Recognizing Talent and Realizing its Potential
One of the many challenges facing today’s sales managers is the ability to employ individuals in a time where productivity and sales results are expected to reach new levels while retaining a smaller sales force. A sales manager’s ability to recognize talent while selecting individuals for their sales force is extremely critical, but often overlooked is the ability to recognize and diagnose certain talents within current team members to reach your desired team goals.
With time and resources at a premium, it is becoming essential for great sales managers to possess the ability to recognize good talent and deploy it properly. In other words, the focus is turning to being able to “bringing out what is inside” your team members not “putting in what is not there.” As a sales manager, once you spot talent, leave it alone, let it come out. Your job is to employ it properly, not alter it. Often managers believe that all individuals possess the same abilities, if only we had the discipline to change our behaviors and change ourselves. A sales manager can still communicate the skills and knowledge that can be taught. But talent is not the same. If “X” is a particular talent, you can not inject it into individuals who do not have that talent. Be grateful for the ones who possess that talent and nurture it. If “X” is a talent you desire in an individual, hire others who possess it.
The key to recognizing talent and having it realize its potential is knowing as much as you can about the people who work for you. The more you know about them and the talents they possess, the more you know which buttons to press when it comes to getting the most out of them to achieve your desired goals.
Here are a few guidelines for recognizing and diagnosing talents within your sales force:
- Spend as much time as possible with your people, getting to know them.
- Observe past work and track record.
- Ask others who work with the individual what they feel that person's talents are.
- Put the individual in as many different scenarios as possible and observe the outcomes.
- Ask the individual what he/she feels their individual talents are. Build upon these.
It is important to remember, your most vital competitive advantage is YOUR PEOPLE.