Knowledge of Sales is totally different then one's behavioral selling style. You may have right personality style - right mix of extroversion, aggressiveness, empathy, etc. - but do you know what to do and say in selling cycle: when to ask for close, when to remain silent, what strategy to use, and when to use it. There is no College of Sales, or BA of Selling. Most sales training programs, in effect, give technical training, but very little in art of selling. Likewise, tools for measuring these Sales Skills are different. What are best things to do and when? These elements include how to: •Prospect •Qualify •Probe •Impress •Demonstrate •Influence •Close. To communicate more effectively with a customer, you may be required to adjust your natural behavioral style. These adjustments may cause stress or require additional energy. "Pumping up" to get more motivated and enthusiastic than one normally feels requires focus and energy. On other hand, stress occurs when results-driven aggressive salesperson has to slow down, listen more and show patience to slower-reacting people. That is why sales knowledge - knowing exactly what to do - is extremely helpful to minimize extra stress or energy required to adjust behavioral style. Advantages include shortening sales cycle, reducing stress and closing sales more often!

Still another common error is profiling only your top performers. Unless you profile your bottom performers as well, your information is invalid. If, for instance, your bottom performers scored same as top performers in a certain category, that trait could be an insignificant concern in hiring process. Yet, testing just top performers would narrow your field and decrease your chances of successful job matching. The benchmarking process is intended to improve productivity and performance but opposite can occur if certain variables in environment are not accounted for in ranking process. It will not be an effective benchmark if your top ranking performers are in a "flush" market - that is, where almost anyone could do a good job. Other environmental factors such as consistency of systems and procedures across all employees considered in benchmarking process may also have a powerful influence. If only half of your team is computerized, behavioral job description may not be same at all. Likewise, communication behaviors appropriate for supporting Sales & Marketing staff is probably quite different from doing that same support work for Auditing. A better method is to have those who work, manage and know position do an objective behavioral job analysis, starting 'from beginning' - that is, don't look at current people, but evaluate job itself. Some of newer tools on market make this exercise convenient (15 to 20 minutes), accurate and inexpensive. Once ideal behaviors are prioritized, job description becomes much easier to define and fulfill. This refinement also accelerates orientation process, greatly reducing that period of time it takes to "get feel" of a new job. Turnover is reduced, performance is enhanced.