Press Release: XB Benchmarks Skills for Successful Digital Sales Representatives
- Leading Assessment Experts Identify Key Competencies Required in Rapidly Expanding Digital Environment -
PORTSMOUTH, R.I. (June 4, 2012) – Digital technology has allowed many companies to expand their offerings beyond print media. While this enables them to reach new audiences by engaging prospects and creating revenue opportunities using a variety of new media, it calls for a new skill set that is very different from traditional selling methodology. With many businesses and publications becoming 100 percent digital, the need for qualified salespeople with expertise in the digital arena continues to grow.
Despite this need, many organizations struggle to find qualified candidates mainly because they do not yet understand the qualities that define these new roles. As well as technical expertise, a digital sales representative must possess certain soft skills that are indicative of success in the changing market. Identifying those skills and finding candidates who embody them is a new challenge.
Success in the digital arena requires a global mindset now that competition is neither limited nor local. Today’s salesperson requires more than product knowledge: connecting with the client and with the market is key to gaining—and maintaining—the competitive edge.
XB Consulting, a global human resources firm and developer of the XC InSight assessment solution, recently created a first-of-its-kind benchmark for assessing digital sales candidates. Combining its innovative technology with responses from industry subject matter experts who manage digital sales representatives, XB Consulting has pinpointed the values, competencies, and critical thinking skills that are vital to a successful digital sales profile.
Key findings include:
- Of the twelve job profile competencies measured, XB Consulting found that exuding confidence, enjoying winning, building rapport, and embodying organizational image are among the most important for digital sales.
- The benchmark highlights the most important critical thinking areas for digital sales; these include analyzing data, drawing conclusions, reasoning based on numbers, thinking constructively and on an abstract level, and dealing with multiple issues and demands through logic and reasoning.
- The top three values for the digital sales representative position are Achievement (strongly motivated by personal excellence and achieving goals), Adventure (motivated by competition, taking calculated risks, tackling new challenges, and working well under pressure) and Conceptual (motivated by work that is mentally stimulating, being seen as an expert, and enjoying a job that allows continual learning opportunities).
“As the digital landscape continues to expand, organizations need to shift their hiring strategies to account for the skills needed in this growing field. Our job benchmark is the first on the market to specifically address the digital sales profile, allowing clients to better assess candidates, make smarter hiring decisions, and assemble sales teams that can successfully advance their business goals,” says Kathi Graham-Leviss, founder and president of XB Consulting and author of the book The Perfect Hire: A Tactical Guide to Hiring, Developing and Retaining Top Sales Talent.
The benchmark is a result of the recently announced partnership between XB Consulting and Currow Weeks, a consulting firm specializing in executive recruitment and training for media companies. Using the critical information defined by XC InSight, Currow Weeks can now further assist its clients in hiring the people most likely to achieve success in the evolving digital sales environment.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL