Sales IQ Plus provides feedback for your individual skills by assessing your effectiveness in eight areas. When used with an effective selling strategy, this information enables you to effectively self-manage and consistently reach your sales potential.
Most people know that the measure of a salesperson’s success is their ability to make sales. However, how can a sales manager or organization determine a sales professional’s current skill level and how can sales professionals effectively identify their own areas of improvement, while finding practical solutions for correcting them?
As with any profession, there are a multitude of skills, behaviors, knowledge and attitudes involved in successful selling. To improve sales performance requires periodically examining all of these areas. The Sales IQ Plus assessment offers an objective analysis to answer the question, “What is keeping this person from selling more?”
The Sales IQ Plus assessment is an objective analysis designed as a starting point — a type of ‘personalized map’ for your sales knowledge at this moment in time. It tells you where you are, why you are there and how to improve by offering specific insights and responses based on your assessment results.
This assessment takes approximately 30 minutes to complete and consists of 48 questions that guide you in assessing each of the eight primary sales competencies. From this, you will be able to accurately and more easily:
A sales “competency” is a category of selling proficiency that contains a number of different skills and knowledge components. By assessing your effectiveness in each of these areas, you will gain critical insight into your sales competencies:
Preparing for the sale and preparing yourself. You can be well prepared with information and sales tools, but if you are not in the appropriate frame of mind, or if you do not appear professional to the buyer, you might not get the sale.
Targeting explores the markets or groups you may target as prospective buyers. Then, we focus on the individuals with whom you will make contact. This includes the sales strategies and tactics you select for each target market.
Connecting is the initial sales contact step, where you must appeal to people intellectually so they will see you as a credible resource, and emotionally so that they will trust you. Without either, you may be inhibited from learning enough to effectively help them and make the sale.
Assessing needs and wants seeks to uncover what to sell and how to sell it, primarily through asking the right questions and listening for the answers. As they say, “In sales as in medicine, prescription before diagnosis is malpractice.”
Solving the buyer’s problem, or fulfilling their need, is where most sales attention has been placed in the past. During this step, you present your ideas and solutions, tell your stories, and demonstrate your product to show how your solution best meets their needs.
Confirming is the sales phase where you gain the prospect’s commitment to buy. Confirming is achieved only after you have shown the ability to solve the prospect’s problem. Historically, this has been known as “closing” the sale.
Assuring clients that what they’ve been promised will be received is critical to customer retention. This is where relationships are built – customer loyalty is earned when you give more than expected, simply because it’s in the best interest of your customer.
Managing is the final phase of the sales cycle, where you continue to manage the sales process, the account and yourself. Ultimately, you are your own ‘sales manager’. This is the place where you must do what needs to be done to follow through.
This award-winning sales skill assessment was jointly developed by best-selling authors Jim Cathcart (Relationship Selling), Jeffrey Gitomer (The Sales Bible), and Dr. Tony Alessandra (The Platinum Rule for DISC Sales Mastery). Borrowing upon the wisdom and experience of these three authorities, Sales IQ Plus measures a sales professional’s understanding of the strategies required to sell successfully in any environment.
The Sales IQ Plus report will provide feedback on an individual’s strengths and weaknesses. From this, you will be able to accurately and more easily:
The Sales IQ Plus assessment is an objective analysis designed as a starting point — a type of ‘personalized map’ for your sales knowledge at this moment in time. It tells you where you are, why you are there and how to improve by offering specific insights and responses based on your assessment results.
Yes! Your online assessment account includes access to a “Team Report” function designed specifically for Sales IQ Plus. This tool is FREE and can be generated in unlimited numbers! Drag and drop any combination of names for those individuals who have taken the Sales IQ Plus assessment. At a glance, the team and their leaders will be able to draw new insights based on the comparison of the group results.
We recommend administering the Sales IQ Plus assessment three times each year. As you master one area of selling, another area might need your attention. Nobody can attend to all areas all of the time, so occasional check-ups will make a big difference in maintaining a constant state of self and sales improvement.
Determine your organization’s overall sales effectiveness and identify the most-needed training by having each of your sales people complete an assessment. As a Supervisor or Sales Manager, you can use Sales IQ Plus as a coaching tool, comparing your observations alongside a candidate’s Sales IQ Developmental Chart to determine exactly which aspects of sales effectiveness they need to improve that are most relevant right now. You can be streamlined in your coaching, rather than general. Sales professionals can learn more about their current effectiveness in all aspects of selling to get a clear idea of which skills to refine first. Some skills may develop at different times and some skills may require additional modifications or attention for different circumstances. Whether new to sales or a seasoned salesperson, the Sales IQ Plus will provide you the objective means for honing your craft.
