A capability review as a lever for performance, development and the right deployment
Client
A financial services provider, division of an international group
Role
Lead capability review - assessment, advice and strategic recommendations
The new growth strategy called for different competencies from the commercial team. The shift from product selling to solution selling touched how sellers engage with the client, how they build value and how the team performs commercially as a whole. The question became: get insight into where the team stood, and where it could go.
Solution selling asks something different from product selling. It asks for a deeper understanding of the client, for stronger consultative behaviour, and for commercial teams that fill their role more broadly. At the same time, the organisation didn't want to jump to conclusions on who fits where, and wanted to start from careful insights into people and team.
The question was therefore twofold: which competencies are present today, and which need to be developed or brought in to carry the new sales strategy? And: how do you place the talent that exists in the right spot, today and in the future?
We built a capability review for the full commercial team, operational and management. Concretely that meant performance and potential assessments per employee, tied to a team analysis that showed where the strengths lay and which development needs called for attention through training and coaching.
Per person, we mapped strengths, development points, potential, motivators and future expectations. Those insights formed the basis for individual development plans and for strategic recommendations on people and business: which competencies to grow internally, which to attract externally, and how the available talent could best be deployed.
The review made decisions on deployment, development and succession concrete and shared. By making the potential of existing employees visible, management got footing for questions on leadership, career progression and team composition.
What first seemed a big strategic shift became a sequence of workable choices: this employee gets this development, this role calls for these profiles, this gap we fill externally. The commercial team could connect with the new strategy because there was a clear story per person.
Strategy shifts succeed when they are translated to the people who have to deliver them. A capability review with attention to strengths, motivators and potential gives a team the direction and the confidence to develop.
It is team development with edge: not just knowing where the team wants to go, but seeing clearly who needs what to carry that movement.
