Sales Performance International, LLC: Innovative and Integrated Talent and HR Strategies

The inability to retain top sales talent, identify sales training for better business impact and to quantify ROI on sales training are challenging many organizations on their way to improving sales performance. SPI is pioneering the use of data analytics to provide innovative Sales Talent Optimization (STO) solutions that help sales and human resource executives maximize their team’s performance across the “hire-to-retire” lifecycle.

“Since 1988, SPI has been a leader in helping global companies successfully transition from selling products to marketing and selling high-value solutions,” says Keith M. Eades, SPI’s founder and CEO. The company leverages talent data analytics to statistically identify the competencies, skills, traits and attitudes that have a cause-effect relationship on improving sales performance. SPI’s STO solutions are based on Sales Talent Optimizer, the only cloud-based sales talent optimization platform with integrated analytics that measures sales performance improvement and ROI. Sales Talent Optimizer includes sales talent assessments— behavioral, personality, knowledge, simulations, surveys—reporting and results, algorithmicbased candidate analysis with recommended “best fit”, sales talent analytics to identify and prioritize competencies for development, and multi-language support.

The company provides two STO solutions— Sales Force Talent Audit and High-Performance Sales Hiring. A Sales Force Talent Audit statistically identifies the sales and sales management competencies to develop, that will have the greatest impact on individual and team performance. Furthermore, this solution leverages the same assessment and analytics technology to identify potential future leaders.

"Since 1988, SPI has been a leader in helping global companies successfully transition from selling products to marketing and selling high-value solutions"

High-Performance Sales Hiring is the answer for companies looking to improve the quality and performance of new sales talent. “The key to identifying and hiring top sales talent is to implement a multi-hurdle sales hiring process that relies less on subjective information and more on proven, objective sales assessment and interview data. And this is what our High-Performance Sales Hiring solution does,” claims Dave Christofaro, SPI’s Director of Sales Talent Optimization. “With an improved process and data, companies can reduce the number of poor hires by 67 percent” he adds.

STO solutions have proven critical in technology-based industries since their sales organizations must quickly adapt to keep up with rapidly evolving technologies and competition. Additionally, for the Life Sciences industry, SPI provides unique competency and assessment solutions to support evidence-based selling. Other industries benefiting from STO solutions are those where buyers are heavily influenced by social media, rather than sales representatives. “To help influence buyer thinking and requirements, sales organizations need to continually adapt their competencies and skills to changing business trends,” adds Eades.

SPI’s long line of clientele includes industry majors like— IBM, Microsoft, Dell, Symantec, Philips, Blackberry, AT&T, Johnson & Johnson, Becton, Dickinson & Co., Novartis and Nike. One of SPI’s client, a mid-sized company was losing market share to a primary competitor. They were looking to invest in developing the competencies/skills of the sales team, but couldn’t identify which competency development would yield the biggest impact on both market share and quantity of units sold. The company engaged SPI to conduct a Sales Force Talent Audit, implementing a multi-rater behavioral 360-degree assessment of the sales representatives. Using historical sales performance data and advanced analytics, SPI was able to statistically identify and recommend skills and competencies to develop. Over the next few years, SPI monitored and measured team development and helped their customer recognize an ROI of over $10M USD.

Since 1988, SPI has been a leader in helping global companies successfully transition from selling products to marketing and selling high-value solutions

SPI is continuing to aggressively invest in the refinement of Sales Talent Optimizer and in 2014, this will include incorporation of additional data and analytics related to realtime management feedback, expanded sales metrics throughout the entire selling cycle, and enhanced dashboards to provide insight into talent, learning, and performance relationships.