Page 54 - Social Media Marketing

Becoming Accountable through Personal Partnering 33

Obtain a Sales Skills Assessment

A sales skills assessment tool typically consists of a questionnaire
designed to test how capable a salesperson you really are. The com-
pany you work for may use its own assessment or hire a service
to assess the skills of its sales force. Ask your manager if such an
assessment is available. If your company does not have its own tool,
search the Web for "sales skills assessment." You will find plenty of
companies that offer assessments online.

Some services provide 360-degree feedback. That is, they collect
feedback from multiple perspectives, including input from your
customers, your peers, your boss, and yourself, and organize it
into a report that highlights your strengths and lesser strengths as
a salesperson. By seeing yourself from different perspectives, you
can build a skill set that enables you to improve relationships with
everyone who has a vested interest in your success.

One of the benefits of 360-degree feedback is that the results are
usually anonymous, so you are looking at people's honest opinions
of your skills and performance. You might not obtain such honesty
by simply asking others what they think.

Obtain Input from Fellow Salespeople

If you work with other salespeople, they are likely to have ob-
served your interactions with clients and formed opinions of how
you operate. Most of them are likely to keep their opinions to
themselves unless you ask them directly. If you feel comfortable
with your colleagues, ask them for their honest feedback. Let them
know that you are serious about improving your sales skills and
that their feedback will help you identify areas in which you can
improve.

Another way to gather feedback is to encourage everyone in the
office to rank one another's skills anonymously. You can distribute
a form like the one shown here asking each person to rank your
skills on a scale from one to five in each of the skills categories.