MT455 Unit 4 Hunter Sales Role Profile Example

Defined by Tasks, Not Traits: An MT455 Unit 4 Sales Role Profile for a Health System Hunter

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT455: Strategic Management of Sales

Unit 4 Sales Role Profile

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Keystrand Access, the role, its territory and the selection steps are composite; the sources cited are real.

Purpose of the Role

The Enterprise Health Systems Account Executive at Keystrand Access wins new health system customers for cloud access control. The role exists because the board's strategy, set out in Unit 2, asks for recurring revenue from health systems, and the coverage model in Unit 3 assigned 11 field sellers to them. Zoltners et al. (2004) argue that a role should be designed around the selling tasks a segment requires, and this profile starts from those tasks.

Territory and Success

Each executive is assigned about 35 named health systems in a region, with no small-business or mid-market accounts. Success after a ramp of two quarters is measured by new subscription customers won and first-year subscription value, not by hardware volume. A typical executive should win four to six new health systems a year once ramped.

What the Work Is

Time shares are estimated from Keystrand's two current health system sellers and from interviews with three health system security directors. Prospecting and account research take about 30 percent of the role: mapping each system's sites, leaders and current access vendor, and watching for triggers such as a new tower, a merger or a security incident. Discovery takes about 25 percent, meeting separately with security, facilities, IT, compliance and clinical leaders, who each care about different things. Design work with integrator partners takes about 15 percent, planning how readers and software will be installed across buildings. Proposals and IT security reviews take about 15 percent, since every health system's IT department reviews cloud software before purchase. Negotiation takes about 10 percent, and forecasting about 5.

Competencies and Their Evidence

Each task maps to a capability and to the evidence it would leave in a candidate's history.

Prospecting and research require the ability to build a target list and a point of view about each account. Evidence: a candidate who can describe how they chose and researched accounts in a previous territory, with examples of accounts opened from no prior relationship.

Discovery across several leaders requires the ability to run conversations with people who want different things. Evidence: sales won where the candidate can name the people involved, their concerns and how the candidate learned them.

Design work with partners requires comfort coordinating third parties. Evidence: deals that depended on an installer, reseller or consultant, and how the candidate managed that relationship.

Proposals and security reviews require patience with long technical processes and the ability to work with IT reviewers. Evidence: sales that passed a formal security or procurement review.

Negotiation requires holding price while conceding terms. Evidence: average discount on past deals, if the candidate can share it, and an example of a concession traded for something in return.

Every competency names the evidence it would leave in a candidate's work history, so the interview can look for it.

What the Profile Leaves Out

Traits such as driven, confident and competitive appear only here, to explain why they were left out. They cannot be observed reliably in an interview, every candidate claims them and they do not distinguish a seller who can manage a nine-month health system sale from one who closes small deals quickly. Schmidt and Hunter (1998), pooling decades of selection research, found that structured questioning and samples of real work predict on-the-job results far better than an interviewer's overall feel for a candidate, and the selection steps below are built on that finding.

Selection: Five Steps

Step one, resume screen, against three must-haves: at least three years of selling to organizations with multiple decision makers, at least one sale with a cycle longer than six months and experience with a technical or security review. Candidates missing any of the three are not advanced.

Step two, a structured phone screen of twenty minutes with the same five questions for every candidate, scored against written anchors.

Step three, a scored behavioral interview with the regional manager and one current seller, asking for specific past examples of each competency. Both interviewers score each answer against written anchors, agreed before the first candidate arrives, that describe weak, adequate and strong responses.

Step four, a thirty-minute mock discovery call. The candidate receives a one-page brief on a fictional health system the day before, and the hiring manager plays a security director. Scorers look for questions about other leaders and the buying process, not a product pitch.

Step five, reference checks with specific questions, such as asking a former manager to describe the candidate's longest sale and how the candidate kept it moving.

Why This Structure

Johnston and Marshall (2021) describe job analysis as the foundation of sales recruiting, because selection criteria that do not come from the actual work tend to select for interview performance instead. Each selection step here measures something in the profile, and nothing in the profile goes unmeasured.

References

Johnston, M. W., & Marshall, G. W. (2021). Sales force management: Leadership, innovation, technology (13th ed.). Routledge.

Schmidt, F. L., & Hunter, J. E. (1998). The validity and utility of selection methods in personnel psychology: Practical and theoretical implications of 85 years of research findings. Psychological Bulletin, 124(2), 262-274. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.2.262

Zoltners, A. A., Sinha, P., & Lorimer, S. E. (2004). Sales force design for strategic advantage. Palgrave Macmillan.