The Challenge

Advertising sales is the lifeblood of any media organization. A leading digital media company was looking to hire new advertising sales representatives. The majority of their current sales team were great at servicing existing customers but did a poor job of bringing in new business. They needed to find sales talent that had a hunter mentality and would be successful in growing new business revenue by a minimum of 10–15% annually.

The Preparation
XBInsight worked with the sales leadership team to create a job specific benchmark identifying the core competencies, motivators and critical thinking skills of their ideal digital media sales representative. Next, the organization’s sales team completed the XBInsight assessment to identify how their scores measured up against benchmark industry data for performance collected over many years.

The Implementation
This process validated the skills required for superior performance and surprisingly, XBInsight found that, when compared to others doing the same jobs, both cream-of-the-crop employees fell significantly below standards in key competency areas.

The Results
They now had a validated process to help them assess future candidates’ fit for the job and their organization. Their benchmark also provided customized interviewing questions to assist hiring managers in screening and interviewing sales candidates. XBInsight’s assessment system is now used as a tool for screening all incoming sales candidates, onboarding new hires and growing and developing current employees. Today, the organization has one of the strongest sales forces in the industry.