Chapter 4

Roles

Be what you are. This is the first step toward becoming better than you are.

—Julius Charles Hare

As described in chapter 3, the ASTD World-Class Sales Competency Model consists of three parts: roles, areas of expertise, and foundational competencies. This chapter explains the roles. We have likened roles to the “hats” that people wear throughout a day, a month, or a year. Roles are not job titles but rather a term that reflects the different hats we are expected to wear in response to the fluid and constantly changing demands of the buyer-seller relationship.

Choosing the right role at the right time is truly the crux of the matter— correctly interpreting those customer demands and how to respond. This is how world-class sales organizations should strive to operate—but they can only do so if salespeople have already been equipped with the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities to meet the demands of the roles they must play as trusted business advisors.

To become trusted business advisors to internal and external customers, sales professionals must build credibility and operate ethically, despite the multiple challenges they face in every interaction. A clear understanding of—and development path to—roles can help, because roles describe how to work effectively with different people in varying situations. They provide a clearer picture of professional selling by spelling out all those various “hats” and serve as a guideline to help sales professionals determine what skills and knowledge are best for a specific situation.

21st Century sales excellence requires a robust set of competencies for a wide range of roles. And while the management thereof can be a complex task, World-Class Selling: New Sales Competencies provides a roadmap and checkpoints to keep us on the right road throughout the journey.

—Jamie Barrette, vice president, North America. Mercuri International

The ASTD 2008 World-Class Sales Competency Study identified six roles that are critical to a successful buyer-seller relationship (see figure 4-1). Each of these six roles is defined as a broad area of responsibility within an organization’s sales function. Each role requires a different combination of competencies and areas of expertise to perform effectively. For example, someone in the strategist role would likely develop the setting sales strategy AOE and would be skilled in several insight competencies such as prioritizing stakeholder needs and identifying options.

The ASTD World-Class Sales Competency Model defines the six roles as:

Consultant:

• leverages expertise and resources to build strong advisory relationships
• suggests best courses of action based on data and helps with rational decision making
• guides the decision making of others, including internal or external customers
• recognizes opportunities for products, services, or solutions to bring parties together to create a mutually beneficial relationship
• acts as the point person in negotiating transactions, fulfilling documented agreements, and building the relationships that are essential to long-term partnering.

Strategist:

• envisions ways of operating or achieving goals that do not currently exist
• articulates the vision in a way that facilitates its transformation to an operational reality, in response to challenges or opportunities
• applies or leads the application of innovative ideas and systems to create a competitive advantage for the organization.

Developer:

• creates business, organizational, or operational solutions or performance improvement initiatives by designing, developing, and delivering specific processes, systems, tools, events, or products intended to add value
• creates or contributes to plans, specifications, or designs that guide individual, product, or process development activities.

Manager:

• exercises direction and supervision of an organization or department
• controls and allocates resources and budgetary expenditures and enforces accountability for and compliance with work-related policies and procedures.

Analyst:

• collects, synthesizes, deconstructs, and reconfigures information (for example, ideas, facts, raw data) to provide insight to others
• works with customers to determine and document business needs
• documents requirements, processes, or methods in the most appropriate manner
• understands technology, systems, and tools for use within the sales environment.

Administrator:

• performs procedure-based activities that are often scheduled on a regular basis or require documentation
• are typically involved with activities that require compliance with established processes, practices, or operational rules.

It Is Not About Job Titles

Sales roles and job titles are not the same thing. Fundamentally, a job title represents a place on the organizational chart—a function that an employee carries out on behalf of the organization. By contrast, roles are the behavioral responses to the buyer-seller relationship and can literally change by the minute. People can play many roles, but most hold only one job title.

However, a job title often can be a collection of roles. For example, someone holding the title of sales manager may have to perform a number of roles, such as strategist, developer, consultant, and so forth. Conversely, one role may be divided among many people. Consider how the role of developing salespeople is often spread among sales trainers, sales managers, and the salespeople themselves.

Historically, sales organizations have been built around the sales transaction, adding salespeople as needed to staff the number of accounts and manage the transactions. Given enough accounts, the organization grows to include extra layers of management to provide oversight. Then, supplementary functions are added—sales operations, sales training, and so forth—in an effort to help the “sales team sell more.” Each of these functions can benefit from an understanding of roles. The roles identified in World-Class Selling: New Sales Competencies help to provide clarity and focus in everyday activities.

Further, it is crucial to understand how a competency-based approach to “sales work” differs. Rather than letting customer demands—as demonstrated by increasing accounts—determine the structure and staffing of their sales organizations, world-class companies take a proactive approach. They know what roles their salespeople will play and equip them with the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities to respond effectively to customer demands.

The Roles in Action

Admittedly, operating within a selling system can be chaotic. Customer demands change constantly. The solution that addresses a customer’s need in one moment may not be applicable in the next. So how does a sales manager guide members of the sales team to make sure they respond in the best way? This is where the sales roles can really come to life. Consider the following examples:

Example 1. The phone rings and the caller asks for the sales manager. The caller reports, “New sales are down in the organization.” What should the sales manager do? He or she has options that draw on different roles, depending on the reason for the downturn.

• Are sales down because there is a lack of capability in the sales force? The manager might want to develop that capability as a developer.
• Are sales down because sales team members are not managing their time well? The manager might want to drive some activity discipline as a manager.
• Are sales down because the market is declining? The manager may want to recalibrate the sales strategy of the team to target different opportunities as a Strategist.

Example 2. A customer sends an email to his or her salesperson, indicating that the customer is not happy. What should the salesperson do? He or she should adopt the appropriate role based on the requirements of the buyer-seller relationship.

• Is the customer unhappy because an undiscovered need is not being met? The salesperson might want to spend some time guiding the customer through need recognition and offering possible solutions, in his or her role as a consultant.
• Is the customer unhappy because the buying organization has received an incorrect invoice and does not know how to fix it? The sales representative might inform the customer of the process to fix the problem and walk the customer through that process as an administrator.

Example 3. During a staff meeting, a sales trainer is informed that “the last training initiative did not work” to increase sales revenue. What should the sales trainer do? The answer depends on what the system requires in that situation.

• Did the training fail because it had no visible metrics defined to show results beyond overall revenue? The sales trainer might want to define other indicators of success (behavior change, increased knowledge, shorter sales cycles) to track as an analyst.
• Did the training fail because there was no on-the-job reinforcement? The sales trainer might want to help the sales leader see the need for such a solution as a consultant.
• Did the training fail because the vendor selected did not deliver as promised? The sales trainer might want to evaluate other vendors and other solutions to deliver the value required as a developer.

The benefit of implementing a competency-based approach is that, regardless of the situation or the role the salesperson is required to play at any given time, he or she is already prepared to play that role—with the requisite knowledge, skills, and abilities that populate the appropriate area of expertise. By taking a proactive look at what the buyer-seller relationship might require and developing those competencies in its salespeople, an organization can position itself for world-class sales.

Where Is the Profit Motive?

Some readers may wonder which roles are directly responsible for revenue generation. As explained in chapter 2, everyone in the sales organization is directly or indirectly responsible for revenue generation. Those who generate revenue and those who support and surround them must work together to achieve the definition of “world-class.” Sales team members might be compensated differently or be closer to the point of sale, but everyone should focus on activities that help advance the sale, synchronize with the customer buying process, stay in tune with market conditions, and increase the profit of each individual sale. In other words, every role requires a degree of responsibility for revenue generation.

Playing by the Roles

As mentioned previously, roles are not unique to any one person in an organization, and sales team members might play multiple roles, depending on the situation. In fact, more than 48 percent of survey respondents indicate that each role is moderately important (above a 4). Respondents were asked to rate the importance of each of the sales roles, from greatest (5) to least important (1). Table 4-1 shows the roles as ranked by the survey respondents.

 

Table 4-1. Role rankings.

Role	High to Low
Consultant	3.95
Strategist	3.93
Developer	3.81
Manager	3.60
Analyst	3.54
Administrator	3.38

 

To be effective in one’s job, the importance of the roles varies depending on organizational level or function. Table 4-2 illustrates that sales team members who bear the most direct responsibility for revenue generation are the most likely to place more importance on the strategist and consultant roles; however, they also indicate that the other roles are important depending on the context or the situation. Table 4-2 shows the roles as they relate to job titles, from greatest (5) to least important (1), as ranked by the survey respondents.

Validating the Roles

In the current model, survey respondents indicate that the six roles cover most sales team job responsibilities. Only 1 percent of respondents selected “Other” as a choice when selecting the roles most relevant to them. All roles have importance ratings far above the minimum average score of 3.5 (ratings were made on a five-point scale, with 1 being “unnecessary” and 5 being “essential”).

Linking Roles and Competencies

As defined previously, roles are broad areas of responsibility that require a certain combination of competencies and AOEs to perform effectively. Thus, it is important to understand which competencies and AOEs are most important for particular roles. Most competencies and AOEs have some relevance for each role. For example, it is easy to see that a foundational competency such as identifying options is important to the successful execution of any of the roles. However, some roles rely more heavily on certain competencies and AOEs than others.

 

Table 4-2. Importance of Roles by Job Title

	Consultant	Strategist	Developer	Manager	Analyst	Administrator
Sales Executive	4.10	4.30	3.95	4.03	3.61	3.56
Sales Manager	3.97	4.20	3.91	4.32	3.75	3.47
Sales Representative	3.79	3.66	3.39	3.16	3.41	3.18
Sales Specialist	3.65	3.72	3.43	3.18	3.48	3.35
Pre-Sales Consultant	4.06	3.50	3.38	2.81	3.44	3.31
Operations Manager	3.96	4.13	3.96	4.22	3.91	3.78
Operations Executive	4.10	4.20	3.80	3.65	3.55	3.70
Sales Compensation Planner	3.83	3.67	3.50	3.67	4.00	4.00
Sales Operations Infrastructure Developer	4.00	3.67	3.83	3.83	4.17	4.00
Sales Operations Researcher/Analyst	4.00	4.00	4.00	4.00	4.00	4.00
Sales Recruiter	3.89	3.78	3.56	4.00	3.78	3.89
Sales Training Manager	4.04	4.15	4.03	3.96	3.67	3.68
Sales Training Executive	3.94	4.26	4.08	4.15	3.56	3.46
Sales Trainer	4.12	3.82	4.06	3.27	3.39	3.08
Sales Training Designer and Developer	4.02	3.55	4.43	2.84	3.61	3.16
Sales Researcher	3.65	3.48	3.48	3.17	3.17	3.17
Sales Professor/ Academic	3.98	3.71	3.90	3.56	3.44	3.40

 

 

Table 4-3 presents the correlations between importance ratings of roles and foundational competencies according to the survey data. Table 4-4 presents the correlations between importance ratings of roles and sales areas of expertise.

The numbers in the table are correlation coefficients with a possible range of –1.0 to +1.0. The closer the correlation coefficient is to +1.0, the stronger the positive relationship. Both tables highlight the strongest correlations. In each row, the role with the strongest relationship is highlighted in the darkest color.

 

Table 4-3. Correlation of Roles to Foundational Competencies

	Consultant	Strategist	Developer	Manager	Analyst	Administrator
Spanning Boundaries	0.32	0.34	0.29	0.18	0.22	0.17
Communicating Effectively	0.28	0.24	0.20	0.09	0.12	0.07
Aligning to Customers	0.19	0.16	0.13	0.04	0.09	0.07
Setting Expectations	0.34	0.29	0.27	0.15	0.21	0.11
Negotiating Positions	0.29	0.31	0.26	0.15	0.19	0.13
Building Relationships	0.25	0.21	0.18	0.04	0.04	–0.02
Analyzing Organizational Capacity	0.27	0.29	0.30	0.24	0.26	0.20
Understanding the Business Context	0.30	0.29	0.30	0.24	0.28	0.23
Evaluating Customer Experiences	0.29	0.33	0.34	0.24	0.28	0.19
Gathering Intelligence	0.31	0.29	0.31	0.22	0.30	0.24
Prioritizing Stakeholder Needs	0.26	0.30	0.30	0.20	0.21	0.18
Identifying Options	0.33	0.32	0.31	0.20	0.27	0.17
Building a Business Case	0.29	0.34	0.36	0.27	0.29	0.20
Facilitating Change	0.29	0.30	0.27	0.18	0.21	0.13
Formalizing Commitment	0.26	0.29	0.24	0.15	0.22	0.20
Resolving Issues	0.25	0.34	0.29	0.22	0.28	0.24
Managing Projects	0.24	0.30	0.26	0.25	0.27	0.25
Leveraging Success	0.27	0.34	0.33	0.23	0.24	0.24
Articulating Value	0.35	0.31	0.36	0.17	0.29	0.13
Building Business Skill	0.32	0.29	0.26	0.21	0.29	0.22
Solving Problems	0.36	0.26	0.31	0.16	0.25	0.14
Embracing Diversity	0.27	0.26	0.31	0.18	0.20	0.13
Making Ethical Decisions	0.28	0.18	0.26	0.12	0.14	0.20
Managing Knowledge	0.39	0.26	0.31	0.17	0.26	0.20
Using Technology	0.22	0.23	0.22	0.11	0.19	0.19
Accelerating Learning	0.28	0.23	0.29	0.12	0.20	0.17
Executing Plans	0.35	0.34	0.32	0.21	0.23	0.10
Maximizing Personal Time	0.34	0.29	0.29	0.20	0.25	0.15
Aligning to Sales Process	0.27	0.22	0.18	0.07	0.21	0.19

 

Table 4-4. Correlation of Roles to Sales Areas of Expertise

	Consultant	Strategist	Developer	Manager	Analyst	Administrator
Creating and Closing Opportunities	0.09	0.19	0.03	0.15	0.11	0.15
Protecting Accounts	0.13	0.21	0.11	0.17	0.17	0.17
Defining and Positioning Solutions	0.24	0.37	0.31	0.29	0.37	0.26
Supporting Indirect Selling	0.17	0.32	0.19	0.30	0.27	0.31
Setting Sales Strategy	0.21	0.47	0.28	0.45	0.32	0.26
Managing within the Sales Ecosystem	0.22	0.38	0.32	0.50	0.39	0.37
Developing Sales Force Capability	0.23	0.39	0.44	0.38	0.29	0.22
Delivering Sales Training	0.20	0.24	0.40	0.30	0.21	0.19
Coaching for Sales Results	0.26	0.31	0.37	0.38	0.22	0.20
Building Sales Infrastructure	0.21	0.38	0.38	0.42	0.31	0.28
Designing Compensation	0.12	0.33	0.28	0.47	0.32	0.34
Maintaining Accounts	0.08	0.23	0.08	0.28	0.24	0.33
Recruiting Sales Talent	0.15	0.35	0.29	0.50	0.28	0.31

 

The second strongest correlation is highlighted in a medium color and the lowest correlation is not shaded.

In the Next Chapter

Chapter 5 contains a detailed discussion of the areas of expertise—the specific technical and professional skills and knowledge required for success within the sales organization.