This week in Building a Championship Sales Team, we get to be a scout. In baseball, it is the scout’s job to assess the talent and determine the players’ strengths and weaknesses. For a baseball team to be successful and win championships, it needs to understand the current makeup of its talent so it can develop players accordingly. This philosophy is the basis of our second key to Building a Championship Sales Team: Determining the Current Talent Makeup of Your Team.

If you remember from last week, key #1 was establishing the talent Success Guide. The Success Guide defines which competencies, knowledge, skills and attributes the people on the team need to be successful and it serves as a guide for the development plan. However, before taking the Success Guide and running off to create the development plan, it is important to understand where the talent is currently against the Success Guide. In some instances your talent will be further along than you thought, but you may need to focus on a few key development areas to be successful. In other instances, for example when adopting a new go-to-market strategy, the team may lack a significant amount of the knowledge and skills it needs and may require a much more comprehensive development plan.

With this in mind, what is the best approach for determining the current talent makeup of your team? At SOAR, we utilize an approach we call the SOAR Success Guide™ Assessment. This assessment uses an automated platform to evaluate team member’s competencies, knowledge, skills and attributes against the expectations of the guide. This provides critical insights as to which team members have the greatest opportunity for success in a role based on the competencies, knowledge, skills and attributes of the current top performers in the role. In baseball terms, the assessment does the scouting for you and provides a benchmark for both the individual and organization to use in determining the development path.

Now we know what the expectations are for the sales team and where the team is currently against the expectations of the Success Guide. The next thing to do before beginning development is to determine and establish the development plan. Please check back soon for our third key to Building a Championship Sales Team: Establishing the Development Plan.