New Sales Team Recruitment & High Performance Benchmarking

Situation ​ Our client, a global FMCG company with several business units operating successfully in the Australian market, recently acquired a new food ingredients business. In order to ensure the newly acquired business has the best possible chance of success, the company needed to hire a team of high performing sales executives across Australia. ​ The organisation engaged Carrera to manage the recruitment of the new sales team. As we were tasked with recruiting 15 individuals across four states it was agreed that there needed to be a consistent method for assessing the potential fit of candidates both in the Sales Executive role and in the new team/business as they worked towards building a high performance culture. ​ Methodology ​ Through the recruitment process Carrera created a High Performance Benchmark for the new Sales Executive role and assessed shortlisted candidates against the benchmark to determine their fit for the role. The tool used was a specific Sales Behavioural Assessment that determined the key behavioural attributes critical to success in the role. The benchmark was created with the feedback from two of the State Managers and validated by the HR Manager and National Sales Manager. ​ As the recruitment process unfolded candidates completed the online assessment between the first and second client interview. The assessment comprised of a learning component – verbal and numerical questioning – as well as an assessment of the candidate’s critical behavioural attributes and hard wiring. The results of each assessment were then benchmarked against the Sales Executive role profile to determine the potential fit of each candidate to the role. ​ Following the offer of employment, the State Managers and National Sales Manager were provided a full training and development report for each individual joining their team as well as a personal profile shared with the Sales Executives on a 1-1 basis through the onboarding process. ​ In order to ensure the entire team was aware of the critical behavioural requirements of the business and speaking the same language around behaviours and performance, we then created a High Performance Benchmark for the State Manager role and assessed the existing State Sales Managers using the behavioural assessment tool. The results of this identified the critical behavioural and leadership attributes required in the State Manager role and identified where the existing State Managers needed to focus their own professional development to ensure they were able to perform successfully in that role. ​ Outcome ​ The new Sales Executive team have now been onboarded into the business and are already demonstrating the behaviours required for success by the business. The team is creating a culture based on high performance and the State Managers now have the tools required to lead the team successfully as well as an understanding of the hard wiring of each team member and how to manage them to success. As a team they have set ambitious sales targets which they are well on their way to achieving.