Research
Schneider Sales Management and Dr. Cliff Young of the University of Colorado at Denver conducted a six year study between February, 1999 and June, 2005. The study involved completion of over 3,000 questionnaires by employees at 50 companies nationwide, twenty-four of them sales consulting clients of Schneider Sales Management who place a strong corporate emphasis on sales and client satisfaction. This information was supplemented by the results of over 200 corporate-wide sales practices assessments conducted for clients of Schneider Sales Management between January 1, 1995 and June 30, 2005.
The overall purpose of the research was to identify which competencies are predictive of high performance and which “fatal flaw” behaviors are predictive of low performance in various sales, service and leadership roles. The financial services industry was selected as the focus industry for our research because virtually every type of selling is represented in this industry and because there is a large population of sales and service workers in this industry with wide geographic dispersion and great variety in corporate culture and size of organization.
By any measure, this is one of the largest and most complex samples ever undertaken in salesperson selection research. This research also served as the basis for development and legally defensible validation of the Optimum Performance Profile® hiring assessment instrument.
During the course of the study we also identified other aspects of sales practices in the financial services industry including the common characteristics of top performing companies and the most common myths about salespeople and salesperson selection. You’ll find links to some of these findings at the top of this page.