Mercedes-Benz - assessment of the entire sales staff

Improve the quality with a mass-assessment

Too much turnover of sales personnel. Ambiguity about individual training requirements for staff. Mercedes-Benz Nederland brought in InContext to help improve the quality with a mass-assessment.

Mercedes-Benz Nederland has two sales locations, whereas the rest of the dealers in the Netherlands are all franchise operations. The 600 salespeople are all centrally selected and hired, tells Branko van Eerden, managing director of Mercedes-Benz Global Training Nederland B.V., or for short, Global Training. Global Training facilitates all training within the national organization. “From car washer to director”, according to Van Eerden. But when the need arose to carry out an assessment of the entire sales staff, Global Training opted to hire in an external party to do the job. “In a number of fields which are directly connected with our organization, we are the experts, but if you want to do assessments you are not going to establish a new specialization. It is better to look for a partner in the same country.”

It was precisely that extra dimension that InContext could offer us

Global Training came to InContext with the problems they were noticing: there was too much turnover of sales personnel, training programs took too long, the quality needed to be improved. Subsequently, InContext staff visited all the dealers in the Netherlands in order to establish an assessment program together with Global Training. After that nearly 700 sales personnel were invited to a half-day assessment.

Van Eerden: “There is always the question of how in-depth the assessment has to be, but naturally the technical quality of the assessment is not the only consideration. There is also a cultural element. For example, someone who performs very well in Groningen, might fail miserably in Amsterdam. It was precisely that extra dimension that InContext could offer us.” The results of each assessment were of course discussed with the salesperson and with his/her direct manager, after which a fitting training program was outlined. The results, says Van Eerden, were tangible: “The people themselves and their managers started to better understand why certain things were not going well. For the dealers, that meant that they could handle their personnel in a better, more serious manner.”

Everyone now has a personal training program, based on what he/she can, must and wants to learn

“Everyone now has a personal training program, based on what he/she can, must and wants to learn. There have been people who were going through all sorts of training in the last five years and now, within a year’s time have become certified. Of course in a few cases, some people came to the conclusion that they literally had to look for another profession.” Global Training as a whole could also see to consequences of the mass-assessment: “We had a boom period for certifications. All of our training programs are better attended and fewer people cancel. We now have 600 people we know in training, as opposed to 600 anonymous people. The whole process has improved.”

The assessments are now a standard procedure for the introduction of each new salesperson at a Dutch Mercedes-dealer. As soon as a salesperson is hired, he receives an automatic invitation for an assessment and for creating an individual training program. “There are even a few dealers who require an assessment before they take someone new aboard, which is maybe even more efficient.”