Interview with Andrew Dugdale, from Fit-4 Sales Assessment (www.salesassessment.com)

1) Hi Andrew, thank you for this interview. Let's start by talking a little about Fit-4. In a short sentence, who should use Fit-4?

Anyone who wants to improve the revenue performance of their sales people – and if you find anyone who doesn’t, then Fit-4 definitely isn’t for them!

Fit-4 is a unique, role specific, robust and highly accurate sales assessment instrument that compares the capabilities of your current sales talent, or new hires, to the capabilities found in a High Performer doing the same role.

This enables you to measure an individual’s suitability for your specific sales role and shows you:

• How well they are likely to perform, compared to a high performer in the same role.
• What their development needs are specifically to improve revenue performance in that role.
• Whether they have the potential to become a high performer – or not.
• What’s going to motivate them to perform better – or stay with you.

2) What have you learned after all your experience with Fit-4? What is the biggest lesson?

The biggest learning/surprise is that so many sales people have ended up in their current jobs simply because there was a vacancy, they happened to be available, and the recruiting manager felt they would fit in with the team.  

The biggest lesson we have seen is that ‘being available’ and ‘seeming like a nice sort of person’ are not good enough reasons to employ sales people.  

The biggest challenge we face is breaking the bad news about the capabilities of their sales team to a sales leader.  The benefit though is that we can at least help them fix those same problems – usually within just a few weeks!  

3) What sales books do you like and recommend?

My favourite books are “Every Business is a Growth Business” by Charan & Tichy (because if you’re not in business for growth – you must be a charity!); and “Differentiate or Die” by Jack Trout (because if you can’t differentiate your offering it’s simply not worth being in business!).

 4) What's the first thing someone should do after taking your assessment?

Take stock of their situation: our assessments are Role specific, so if a candidate gets good results – then hoorah!  the right person is doing the right job, and they should feel good about the fact they are in a happy minority of sales people and enjoy their undoubted success.  

If a candidate gets poor results – then maybe they need to reconsider whether they are doing the right job – often sales people hunger for sales jobs with bigger titles, but then find them hard, become less successful, and so become unhappy; by taking a job for which they are a good fit, regardless of the title, they will be more successful, happier – and ultimately enjoy their career in sales. 

If people get results showing they are in the right job, but lacking capabilities – then they should work with their employer to improve their skills, and through that their success, and ultimately their happiness.   To be successful in sales you just have to enjoy your job.  

Rule number 1 – ensure you are in the right job; 

Rule number 2 – ensure you are fully trained for that job;

Rule number 3 – don’t think the grass is greener elsewhere – enjoy your new found happiness and success.

About you:

5) How did you get started in sales?

I started life as an electronics engineer back in the mid seventies, moving into the embryonic business of computer engineering in the late seventies.  After qualifying as a computer engineer I moved to work as a product specialist with an Intel Partner right at the start of Intel and the Microchip.  After working in that role for a few months, I found that I was designing in product which was resulting in the customer buying, often without a sales person being involved, so I migrated to ‘technical sales’.  

After a few years doing this I moved to a fully fledged sales job in the early 80’s with a British company producing Ethernet components, right at the beginning of the networking revolution, initially selling, then managing European Sales, then Worldwide sales.  

From this point in the late 80’s I moved into a major US Telco, just as the telecoms business was deregulating and enjoyed success there, before my final move in corporate life to ICL in the mid ‘90’s.  

I left ICL to start my first sales training business (Intellectual Capital Development Limited – which is still going) in 2000, developing the basis of the Fit-4 product during this time.  I formed SalesAssessment.com in April 2008 to sell the advanced hybrid sales assessment tests I had developed over the previous 8 years.  

6) What was your toughest sales ever?

My toughest sale was persuading my wife that it was right for me to leave the security of a very well paid Corporate job to “risk it all” in my own business!  Thank goodness it was a success! Or I may not be here talking about it today!

7) Most memorable sale? Was it because of the money, the adrenaline, the recognition, the power?

None of the above – it was memorable because it was the only sale I wasn’t sure I wanted to make.  Going out on your own is a very big step, especially when you have kids at private schools and a very expensive house to run.  I know it was right, but I was looking for reasons to “lose the deal” all the way through.  So I was selling to my wife – and also to myself!

About your consulting:

8) What is the biggest mistake you see as a sales consultant?

I’m not really a sales consultant any more, I now research, design and publish role specific sales assessment tests.  But in my time in my other company I have seen them all – perhaps the biggest mistake I have seen over and over again is people worrying too  much about the competition instead of getting on and creating competitive advantage through continuously improving the value of their offering to their customers.   

Actually – in thinking this one through – perhaps the biggest mistake people make is to study their competitors in detail, but NOT spend time understanding their customer’s business in the same sort of depth.  

How crazy is that?  It ends up with them designing their businesses as “followers” to their competitors, trying to keep up with them instead of trying to innovate and lead.  And we all know there are no prizes for being second in sales.  Maybe some companies “design in” being second???

9) What are you working on right now that makes you feel energized? What's your next big project?

My next big project is to answer the "so what" question many customers ask after taking our assessments.  The level of granularity in the development detail we provide is very fine and most training courses are more like blunt instruments than surgical instruments.  

Once our customers see exactly where the capability gaps are for each individual, they want to invest specifically in these precise learning gaps – not apply a blunt instrument approach.  

My next challenge is to find enough high quality e-learning modules that are a good fit to our diagnostics and develop a portal enabling our customers to identify precise training elements for each individual.

10) What is the best testimonial/comment you have ever received? Or the one that touched you the most?

Fortunately I get many testimonials, but I think the best one recently was from one of our smaller, growing customers who said ““Growing businesses need the best sales talent, with the right skills, in the right roles, with each sales person highly motivated at all times.  Yet that is one of the hardest things to get right.  Fit-4 delivers the means for any business manager to get that golden combination, whether you understand sales people or not.  Whether hiring, or developing your existing sales people, Fit-4 can guide your investment decisions into the areas that will deliver the most return.”

It really doesn’t get better than that – being able to help not just the Fortune 500, but also the smaller guy.

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To know more about Fit-4, please visite http://www.salesassessment.com/index.html