CASE STUDY

Global Salesforce Assessment Matching the Right Sales Rep to the Right Product

January 2016

Introduction: Optimizing Sales Performance Across Multiple Products

Corning Incorporated is a leading $10 billion American manufacturer of glass and ceramics. Although most of Corning Incorporated’s products are industrial, Corning has a substantial medical and scientific division titled Corning Life Sciences. Corning Life Sciences has 70 unique medical products which are sold by 200 global sales representatives spread over 7 regions. For companies with multiple products and multiple international sales offices, optimizing sales performance across all products is always a top priority. Assuming all products are up to standard, sales performance can still vary wildly depending on a variety of factors, such as the following:

· Management— Despite centralized policies, often regional offices may prioritize certain products to the cost of another products. · Training — Training can vary across offices if there isn't a comprehensive training policy and procedure. · Experience — Certain sales offices may be lacking sales representatives with sufficient experience in certain products. It can be a great challenge to gain this necessary visibility into a large global salesforce spread across several international offices.

Recently, a leading glass and ceramics manufacturer sought to remedy this problem by launching a universal survey. This company offered 70 unique medical products which are sold by 200 global sales representatives spread over 7 regions.

This company sought to deepen their insight into their global sales force by answering the following questions: · What training did each sales representative need? · Were the gaps in training individual or systematic across teams? · Which products have had the most training?

The company was confident that by crossmatching the above mentioned insights with sales numbers, they would have a better understanding why certain products perform well (and not so well) in certain regions.

Challenge Time-Consuming with No AutomationThis was not the first year Corning had tried to conduct a performance assessment. They had previously conducted their performance assessment through Excel, which restricted data input to one file.

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Unclear MetricCorning also did not have a clear pre-established quantitative metric to define expertise. They wanted to find out both the sales representatives technical knowledge and familiarity with the product (comfort level of discussing the product with the customer) but were unsure how to create a comprehensive metric that covered both areas.

Accurate Assessment It is difficult to accurately assess soft-skills like expertise and experience. Even if the individual sales representative may report he or she is an expert in a given product, this may not actually be reflective of reality. Corning needed a way to overcome the inherent problem in self-reporting.

Solution Employing an Assessment-Specific Tool

Instead of using one Excel sheet to track individual interviews, Corning decided to use QuestionPro Workforce, an online internal survey tool. QuestionPro Workforce drastically improved the assessment experience by doing the following:

Automate Survey Delivery. The assessment was delivered automatically to each individual sale representative’s email as a link that could be accessed as many time as necessary. The survey auto-saved their progress, allowing them to fill out the survey over multiple sessions, which reduces survey fatigue and allows for greater fidelity. Set multiple levels of feedback. Using QuestionPro Workforce, Corning was able to solicit both supervisor feedback and self-assessment feedback off the same survey. Multiple levels of feedback allows for a more comprehensive and thorough assessment of an individual’s skill. Track completion rate. The survey was kept open for a month, during which the admin user could track the status of each individual. This made it easy for the admin to identify whose data was missing from the exercise. Automated reminders. QuestionPro Workforce automatically sent a set of three reminders, which helped achieve a high completion rate. Create an automated report. QuestionPro Workforce automatically generated a pdf report that not only details each question’s scoring, but also pulls out the five highest scoring areas and five lost scoring areas. This allows the assessor to identify each sales representatives’ strengths and weaknesses at a glance. This pdf can also later be easily uploaded into each individual’s Salesforce account.

Clearly Defined Metrics

Originally, Corning proposed dividing technical knowledge and familiarity into two separate questions; however, this immediately doubled the survey’s length, and ultimately proved impractical. After consulting with QuestionPro’s experts, Corning ultimately decided to create following five-scale metric:

1 - I am unfamiliar with the product and do not feel comfortable discussing it with customers. 2 - I am familiar with the product, but do not feel comfortable discussing it with customers.3 - I am familiar with the product and comfortable discussing it with customers.4 - I understand the product’s technical requirements well and feel comfortable discussing it with customers5 - I understand the product perfectly and am very comfortable discussing it with customers.

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These inputs were sufficiently varied for the respondent to clearly indicate if he needed more training or simply more experience. By combining the two areas into one metric, the survey length stayed manageable.

Recommendations for Future Exercises

Clarity of Purpose. It is recommended that at least two weeks and two sessions be spent clarifying the purpose of this exercise to participants. By making the advantages clear (more visibility, more training) to both supervisors and sales representatives, this ensured a higher completion rate and more detailed responses.

Sufficient Timeline. For multi-leveled, detailed surveys, it is recommended the participants be given at least three weeks to complete their responses. A shorter time-line puts additional stress on participants to skim and skip through the questions and also gives the administrator limited time to follow-up on incomplete assessments.

White-list the QuestionPro Email Engine. All assessments are emailed from the QuestionPro email engine. Corporate emails with stringent email filters may end up labeling the assessments as spam, which delays and impedes the assessment process.

Conclusion

“You can only improve what you can measure.”

Traditionally, sales representatives have been evaluated strictly by their sales numbers. Have they hit their targets? This pressure for targets ultimately forces sales representatives to specialize in a handful of products. This is not inherently bad, except it runs the risk of certain products not getting sufficient attention and support. With a global sales force, there is also always the problem of relaying information and visibility. The regional manager may know who is most adept with what product, but this may not be fully communicated back to headquarters.

By having a standardized assessment in addition to the traditional sales numbers analysis, this allows headquarters greater visibility and more knowledge to plan a tighter strategy. Perhaps even more importantly, the data can guide management to crucial questions: are products actually performing below expectations due to poor product or poor sales support? What differentiates the products that have been well introduced to sales? Is there a consistent gap between product managers and sales representatives? Through asking the right questions, management can implement truly impactful changes.

“QuestionPro Workforce has reduced our assessment lead time by over 50%.”

Mark RothenbergManager of Scientific Training and Education

www.QuestionPro.com · sales@questionpro.com · +1 (800) 531-0228