Sales Competency Assessment
Top Benefits of Using Sales Assessments
- Customized Sales Training: Tailors development programs to address specific skill gaps.
- Increased Sales Productivity: Ensures the team is operating at its highest potential.
- Data-Backed Sales Hiring Decisions: Identify the traits of salespeople who will excel in the role, and moving current team members into new or expanded roles.
- Strategic Sales Alignment: Ensures the salesforce is aligned with organizational goals and market demands.
- Internal and External Benchmarking: Measures your team against both your own top performers and best-in-class external data.
How Sales Assessments Improve Sales Performance
A sales competency assessment produces two levels of data that work differently. Team-level results show where capability sits across the entire salesforce, which is what a training program should be built around. Individual results show what a specific salesperson needs, which is what a sales manager coaches to. Both matter, and each drives a different path to improving sales performance.
Individualized Sales Development Plans
A sales assessment shows each salesperson’s strengths, motivators, and behavioral tendencies, giving sales managers a specific place to start every coaching conversation. Tyson Group provides a coaching guide for every competency reported, so development plans connect directly to the training each salesperson receives.
Identify Sales Skill Gaps for Targeted Training
Team-level results rank competencies from strongest to weakest across your entire salesforce, showing where capability is thin before you commit a training budget. That view lets leaders design sales training around the skills the data says are weak, so you can pinpoint training to ensure success in the role.
Reduced Sales Turnover
When leaders invest in talent development grounded in a robust sales assessment, they signal commitment to their sales teams’ growth and career advancement. Sales assessments enable leaders to understand what motivates each rep and what support they need to succeed resulting in an engaged and loyal sales team.
Succession Planning
A sales assessment identifies high-potential people who show the behavioral traits and decision-making ability that leadership roles require. Spotting future sales managers early lets organizations invest in them proactively and build a leadership pipeline that protects continuity.
Career Path Alignment
Assessment data clarifies whether a salesperson is suited to new business development, account management, or leadership. Sales leaders use it when weighing a promotion, a new sales hire’s fit, or a move into a different role, since it shows readiness against what that role requires.
Retention and Engagement
Investing in development grounded in assessment data signals real commitment to your people. Understanding what motivates each salesperson and how they prefer to be coached builds trust, strengthens morale, and keeps strong talent in place.
What Sales Competency Assessments Measure
Competencies and skills are related concepts that differ in scope. A skill is a specific ability someone can perform, often acquired through training or practice. A competency is broader, encompassing the skills and knowledge and behaviors that together produce effective performance in a role.
The Tyson Group Sales Competency Assessment measures more than 30 competencies across 150 questions, organized into three categories.
Below are some of what we measure rather than the complete list.
Traits and Personal Characteristics
- Emotional Intelligence
- Adaptability
- Problem-solving
- Coachability
General Business Competencies
- Written communication
- Formal presentation skills
- Market understanding
- Customer Service
Sales Competencies
- Prospecting
- Questioning
- Objection handling
- Negotiation
What Makes Tyson Group's Sales Assessments Different?
Predictive Validity
Our Sales Assessment draws on 17 meta-analyses covering more than 410,000 salespeople and leaders, and a review of 459 sales-related activities, which makes it able to predict sales performance reliably over time.
Academic Credentialing
Built on more than 50 years of academic research and current survey design methodology, making the assessment both statistically reliable and valid.
Benchmarking
Results are benchmarked against both external salesperson data and the internal Tyson Group database.
A Complete View of Every Salesperson
Our Sales Competency Assessment assesses traits, business acumen, and sales acumen together for a holistic view of each individual.
Role-Specific Insights
The assessment is tailored by role across sales, service, leadership, and job candidates, measuring each person against the competencies that matter for the position they hold or the one you are hiring for.
Aggregate and Individual Reporting
Results can be viewed by team, region, or role, with each individual audit compared against the wider organization.
Descriptive and Prescriptive
The assessment describes where each salesperson stands today along with insight into how to develop them, so leaders get a diagnosis and a development path.
Coaching Guides
Tyson Group provides coaching guides for every role and every competency reported.
Time Commitment
The full assessment takes 20 to 25 minutes, roughly half the time of comparable tools, while measuring more competencies than the alternatives.
FAQs About Sales Assessments
-
How do I evaluate my sales team and identify skill gaps?
Start with a structured assessment that measures competencies rather than outcomes. Revenue and quota attainment tell you who is performing, though they cannot tell you why. A sales competency assessment scores each person against benchmarked data across traits and business acumen and sales acumen, producing a ranked view of strengths and gaps for every individual and for the team as a whole.
-
What are the sales capabilities that successful salespeople possess?
Research points to a combination of personal traits, general business competencies, and sales-specific skills working together. Strong performers tend to show adaptability alongside emotional intelligence and problem-solving, paired with applied skills such as questioning and delivery and negotiation. No single trait predicts success on its own, which is why measuring across all three categories produces a more accurate picture.
-
How do sales capabilities vary by role?
The competencies that predict success shift depending on what the role requires. A sales-dominant role such as an account executive or territory manager depends heavily on questioning, recommendations, and networking. A service-dominant role such as customer success or relationship management leans more on time management and customer service and collaboration. A leadership role such as a sales director or chief revenue officer depends on emotional intelligence alongside problem-solving and facilitation. The Tyson Group Sales Competency Assessment weights each competency by its importance to the specific role rather than scoring everyone against one standard.
-
How do sales assessments improve sales training and coaching?
Assessments show leaders where to spend training dollars. Instead of running the same program for everyone, an assessment identifies which competencies need attention across the organization and which individuals need targeted coaching. Tyson Group pairs every assessment with coaching guides for each competency, giving sales managers specific guidance for developing their people rather than a report they have to interpret alone.
See Where Your Sales Team Stands
Every sales performance question comes back to the same starting point: knowing what your people can do today and what they need next. The Tyson Group Sales Competency Assessment gives you that answer for every salesperson and for the organization as a whole, so your next investment in sales training, coaching, or talent goes exactly where it will improve sales performance most.