Using Assessments to Strengthen Sales Competencies: A Path to Smarter Development

In today’s rapidly shifting sales landscape, conversations about sales competencies often center on the same question: How do we help sales professionals grow in ways that truly matter to performance? Most leaders and coaches want to guide their people toward targeted, meaningful development. But many still rely on intuition or generic skill frameworks rather than data about what actually drives effectiveness.

This is where a well-designed assessment can make all the difference. Tools like the Sales Performance Assessment (SPA) were developed to do more than describe someone’s style; they pinpoint the specific behaviors and motivational drivers that matter most for different sales competencies, supported by decades of research. When sales professionals have access to this kind of clarity, they can invest their developmental energy where it will have the greatest payoff.

Why Assessments Matter for Developing Sales Competencies

Many organizations endorse the importance of core sales competencies, but fewer have a reliable way to determine what actually enables someone to grow in them. We often assume that a competency is a single skill: “be more strategic,” “be more persuasive,” “expand business with existing customers.” The research behind the SPA tells a very different story.

MRG’s decades of data show that each sales competency is connected to a unique pattern of behaviors and drivers. In other words, what it takes to excel in one competency is not the same as what it takes to excel in another. And more importantly: the same developmental strategy will not work for every individual.

This is the power of assessments like the SPA. They help leaders and sales professionals understand three things:

1. Which behaviors and drivers are most important for a specific competency?
2. Where the individual currently emphasizes (or under-emphasizes) these behaviors.
3. Which 1–3 targeted shifts will create the greatest movement toward effectiveness?

That last point is essential. Strategic development is not about “fixing everything.” It’s about investing in the few behaviors that will matter most for a particular role, goal, or competency.

The SPA Self-Assessment: A Research-Backed Mirror for Growth

The SPA Self-assessment gives sales professionals a comprehensive look at how frequently they use 18 sales behaviors and how strongly they are driven by 6 core motivators. The behaviors are grouped across the three major phases of selling: Preparation, Contacting, and Implementation. The results help individuals clearly see their own patterns.

Instead of receiving generic advice like “build more client loyalty” or “be more strategic,” individuals see precise, research-supported connections. For example, if someone wants to strengthen the sales competency of building long-term client relationships, the assessment highlights the behaviors most strongly linked to that outcome. Each person can then evaluate how much emphasis they currently place on those behaviors and identify what should change.

Leaders appreciate this because it gives them language that is developmental rather than evaluative. And sales professionals appreciate the clarity. Many say the SPA describes patterns they had sensed but could not articulate. The result is a development plan that feels achievable, grounded, and truly individual.

Examples of Sales Competencies

The SPA measures competencies in the SPA Boss assessment, a 180-degree assessment where managers provide feedback on a sales professional’s behaviors, drivers and effectiveness in 26 sales competencies. These cover the full breadth of what matters in the contemporary sales environment. They include areas such as:

• Developing business with new customers
• Resilience and learning from mistakes
• Initiative and self-direction
• Effectively utilizing product technical knowledge to deliver solutions to customers
• Ability to effectively take on leadership responsibilities
• Future Potential

MRG research has shown that each competency draws on different combinations of behaviors and drivers. When individuals understand these connections, they stop trying to grow “in general” and start growing in the ways that actually support their goals.

A Closer Look: Expanding Business with Existing Customers

One of my favorite examples comes from the SPA research on the competency of expanding business with existing customers. The data show that top performers in this competency tend to emphasize a specific pattern of behavior, providing us with a list of the most important behaviors for expanding business with existing customers:

• Production
• Tactical
• Persuasive
• Management Focus
• Prospecting
• Market Awareness

This combination makes intuitive sense. Growing business within an account requires a strong results orientation (Production), the ability to act quickly on opportunities (Tactical), the skill to influence stakeholders (Persuasive), and a solid understanding of the account’s broader environment (Market Awareness). Management Focus supports navigating internal decision structures and aligning others to advance opportunities. And Prospecting matters because expanding business often requires continually identifying untapped needs within the existing customer base.

Here is where the SPA becomes powerful. If a sales professional wants to improve this competency, the research suggests they should not try to increase all six behaviors at once. Instead, they should look at their SPA profile and focus on 1–3 of these behaviors based on their current emphasis.

For example, imagine a sales professional named Jordan who scores high on Production, Persuasive, and Market Awareness but low on Tactical and Management Focus. Without the assessment, Jordan might assume the best path to growth is to work harder, push more, or “be more persuasive.” But the data suggest a different strategy: Jordan could make far greater gains by focusing development on becoming more Tactical (responding more quickly, acting more decisively) and strengthening Management Focus to navigate the client organization more effectively. This kind of insight can save months of trial and error. It redirects effort toward the behaviors most likely to influence the competency and away from habits that may already be strong enough. The development plan becomes leaner, more targeted, and far more effective. Importantly, these insights can be used with the SPA Self  alone or the full 180-degree assessment.

Measuring Competencies Directly: The Value of SPA Boss (180-Degree Feedback)

While the SPA Self-assessment is ideal for understanding one’s own behavior patterns, sales professionals who want to directly measure their performance on sales competencies can benefit from the SPA Boss assessment. This 180-degree tool gathers a manager’s perspective on the individual’s behaviors, drivers and competency effectiveness.

This matters because development accelerates when people understand not only how they see themselves, but also how they are experienced by others, especially the person responsible for guiding their performance. The SPA Boss assessment provides this bridge, helping individuals identify gaps they may not have recognized and creating a shared language between manager and salesperson.

Used together, the SPA Self and SPA Boss assessments create a complete, research-aligned picture:

• Self-insight about behavioral patterns
• External insight about observed effectiveness
• Shared clarity about where to grow next

A Smarter, More Human Approach to Sales Development

The most effective sales professionals are not the ones who chase every skill, trend, or technique. They are the ones who invest in the right capabilities at the right time, informed by an understanding of who they are and what their role requires.

Assessments like the SPA Self and SPA Boss offer a powerful way to anchor that growth. They help sales professionals and coaches work with precision rather than guesswork, and they offer leaders a clear, supportive framework for guiding their teams.

Most importantly, they respect the individuality of each salesperson and acknowledge that no two roles, markets, or people are the same. When development is tailored to this level of nuance, the results are not only more effective, they are more sustainable, more motivating, and more human.