Hiring Assessment Case Studies Improving Sales Performance A major business equipment company had 400 sales people in a role where activity the number of daily cold sales calls drove performance. After analyzing their sales force and identifying sales impediments, such as sales people returning to the office too early in the day, sales management narrowed down a range of acceptable sales patterns and identified a minimum level of Behavioral Adaptability needed to sustain a high number of daily sales calls. Implementing the changes and adhering to them, the company raised sales, margins, and profits between 12% and 22% over an 18 month period Improving Sales Performance A Canadian fashion retailer with about 100 stores undertook a study to identify the critical job behaviors of their sales associates. The job study showed that in a general sense the sales people were more sociable, group-dependent, service-oriented personalities, but most importantly it revealed that the behavioral variance having the greatest impact on up selling and cross selling was fear of rejection. The difference between top and lower performers was so subtle that it was not apparent in interviews, but only showed up in the test results. Using the results as a basis for subsequent hiring, the company raised both individual and store sales. Improving Sales Performance We worked with an international company with almost 70 laser eye centers to study their critical front line sales job of Patient Consultant. A service orientation was essential for dealing with patients, but the people in the job had to respond to both financial obstacles and fears with respect to surgery. Our job study revealed that a very
minor behavioral difference essentially the ability to relate but not over-empathize with patients - separated their top performers from middle and lower performers. Using the job patterns developed in the study, the company was able to close more sales and improve sales productivity while reducing their advertising expenses. Reducing Turnover A major hotel chain, one of the largest in the world, managed its reservations from a Phoenix-based call center employing 400 people. They had been using another assessment tool to hire call center agents, but were experiencing very high turnover. The company converted to OMS and we initially worked with them to clarify the job patterns of top performing reservation agents. Using those job patterns as the basis for their hiring, over the course of the next year the company significantly reduced their turnover and documented savings of $1.4 million dollars. Shifting to a New Sales Strategy... A software company based in the UK with international sales of 13 billion dollars sold its products to customers of all sizes. For many years the UK group used the same inside call center sales force - 175 salespeople to sell their products. With the pressures of increasing competition and better educated buyers, the company broke its business into three markets. The company had only recently begun to use OMS, so we worked with their sales management team to identify the selling approach needed in each of the three sales roles. For major markets we determined that a relationship management type of selling style was necessary, but for the middle and small company markets a more transactional selling style would be most effective. Further studying their sales people, we also isolated the differences between the transactional personalities who performed best in the middle market as opposed to those who performed best-selling to smaller customers.
Shifting to a New Sales Strategy... A media management company with 60 radio stations was receiving an increasing amount of negative feedback from their advertising customers. Their very transactional types of salespeople performed best when the economy was good, but when it soured; customers resented the hard sell and wanted more in the way of marketing support. Working with the company, we studied the job and determined that a relationship management selling style would be a more effective strategy. In evaluating their current salespeople against the new job criteria we realized that they would need to replace more than half their 300 sales staff. Their station sales managers, themselves products of the old school of selling balked at replacing the salespeople. Corporate sales management acquiesced and sales continued to drop over the next 18 months. The parent company sold the radio station group shortly afterwards. Improving Management A large fast food company with 3500 units operated by 1700 franchisees was experiencing problems with the consistency of it customer experience, particularly service. They linked the problems to the quality of store management, so we implemented Looking Glass, an adapted version of OMS, to help the franchisees hire managers who would deliver the quality and service promise. Our work involved extensive job analysis of the store manager role, the development of a special assessment report comparing candidates to the job requirements, on-line training for the franchisees on how to use the system, a simplified version of the OMS website, and automated emailed candidate reports. Feedback from franchisees has been very positive, but the decentralized business model prevents us from collecting data on the impact of the system. Facilitating Business Transformation The new Managing Director of a small UK firm in the automotive aftermarket wanted to aggressively grow the business. Armed with a new team of
managers, among a number of changes, he implemented our system. We conducted a study of his 79 branch managers, which showed that the prevailing style was conservative, follow the rules, and make no mistakes. As part of a major cultural change we created a new behavioral model for the managers, one with a more assertive, achievement-oriented, and goal-based style, and over a period of three years the company adhered strictly to that model, transforming their entire branch management group. The business expanded rapidly and very profitably throughout the UK and into the middle east, and grew by more than 300% over a seven year period. Identifying the Cause of Sales Problems A large international travel agency was concerned about their sales performance which, despite being in a growing market, was in a long, slow decline. With 375 travel agents in their branches, they were about to initiate a sales training program, when we advised them to first undertake a study of their agents to see if there might be other issues that needed to be addressed. Indeed, the study showed two major problems: half of their sales team were essentially poor fits for the travel agent role, and virtually the entire group, responding to the company s long and deep service culture, perceived their jobs as service roles rather than sales! Instead of training, the company set out to systematically replace the weak performers with little potential, and concurrently changed the message from top management to one emphasizing selling rather than the legacy service values. The changes curbed the long sales decline and generated higher profits. Reducing the Time to Hire With just three people in HR to help 127 store managers assess candidates and hire staff, a retailer in the photographic field was requiring up to two weeks to respond to candidates. The result was that most candidates would take other jobs before the company could contact them, and they were chronically understaffed! We proposed a number
of changes to their hiring system, including funneling candidates through their Internet career site, automating the administration of the OMS on their career site, automatically pre-screening candidates against their job models, alerting hiring managers when high-quality candidates came through the system, and transferring candidate OMS data and compatibility ratings to their ATS so that regional and store managers could access the data. A year after the new system was implemented, their staffing ratio had greatly increased, turnover had dropped by more than 10%, and their response time to get back to candidates was reduced from two weeks to ten minutes! Adapting to Marketplace Changes The largest chain of optical shops in the UK was having difficulty maintaining their sales in light of changes in government regulations. We conducted a study of their more than 700 shop managers, most of whom were opticians, but some of whom were optometrists. The study was able to differentiate the traits and attributes distinguishing those managers who were effective at selling eye examinations from those who could do that but were also better able to upsell eyeglasses features. Using the results of the study, the company was able to more accurately hire and match up managers to the local needs of their shops. Identifying Hidden Talent A heavy manufacturing company, part of a larger group, was using our system to identify potentials for management. Based upon the test results, they identified a young engineer who they had previously never considered for management, and shortly thereafter promoted him into his first supervisory role. Five years later he had risen to the level of division manager, and eight years after than became Vice President and General Manager of the parent organization.
Improving Customer Service A large financial services company with locations in airports and cities throughout the world had thousands of employees continually in contact with customers. As part of their effort to improve customer service they trained their managers in the United States, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Hong Kong in Interaction Styles to help them understand the different communication and interpersonal styles of customers and to help them cope with insensitive and rude customer behaviors. A prize in the box with OMS, their extensive implementation of Interaction Styles training cost them only the price of the materials and their trainers! Developing New Sales Channels A UK based travel tour provider had an opportunity to joint venture a new business with an upscale department store group, developing a travel store within a larger store. However, dealing with a different buyer market and different selling circumstances, the company s traditional retail selling approach would need to be changed. Using both JAX to model the new job and a sampling of top performers in their branch organization to contrast with the JAX, the company created new job profiles and adhered closely to them in their subsequent hiring. The pilot project of four stores within a store was highly successful over its trial period, and the company is now using those job profiles to staff up four additional stores Avoiding Business & Legal Problems A long haul trucking company based in the eastern part of the country had us undertake a study of their drivers to determine what they could learn about improving performance and reducing the possibility of accidents. Against a range of performance criteria, among other findings, the study showed a correlation between lower levels of Behavioral Adaptability and a higher accident rate. Following the study, the client used the tighter hiring standards to improve safety