Case Study - Success Profiling

Client Need

A large FMCG business was under pressure to leverage top-line revenue performance. As part of an overall sales effectiveness strategy, they sought assistance in building the capability of people in business development roles across the organisation.

CompAssess Solution

CompAssess was engaged to help the client understand the success criteria for different business development roles. The resultant Success Profiles were to be utilised for feedback and development planning and to target and drive the highest pay-off organisation development activities.

Fundamentally different roles were identified through consultation with client stakeholders. These included roles such as sales managers, key account managers and sales representatives.

Through a highly consultative process focus groups were conducted with incumbents to gather data on the range of responsibilities, activities and time applications required in each role. Using the critical incident methodology, managers of incumbents were interviewed to share performance data: the situations or examples that best capture or define strong or poor performance in the roles. Data was also collected to understand the potential derailers in the roles: those personality attributes that may undermine performance even when incumbents are endowed with the ability to display required behaviours. These data enabled the drafting of competencies that captured the behaviours that were thought to underpin success in each role.

Additional data were collected from incumbents and their managers regarding knowledge requirements to perform effectively in the role as well as the key experiences incumbents had previously had that helped them to prepare for the challenges of their current role.

All the data were analysed by CompAssess consultants to draft a provisional Success Profile for each of the different business development roles in the enterprise. The provisional Success Profiles were formatted into a validation questionnaire that gave a wide variety of business development stakeholders the opportunity to comment with respect to the accuracy and comprehensiveness of the provisional data.

Outcome

Following some minor adjustments based on feedback from the validation questionnaire, the finalised Success Profiles were presented for each key business development role in the organisation.

Due to the high levels of consultation, robustness of approach, and quality of analysis, the key stakeholders in the organisation have embraced the Success Profiles and they have been actively deployed through the business.

All people in business development roles have subsequently undertaken development centres to help focus them on leveraging their identified strengths and to close development gaps. The profiles are being used as the platform for ongoing feedback and performance management and as the basis for recruiting talent from the external labour market and for promoting within. Finally, the profiles are providing a valuable input into the construction of organisation wide capability development programs, ensuring that the focus for development is aligned with the very elements that underpin strong performance.