جدا کردن گندم از کاه :جذب نیروی فروش هوشمند و سیستم الگوبرداری

The need for computer-based intelligent techniques for recruitment and retention of employees in a highly competitive global market has grown significantly in the last decade. Salesperson recruitment is a critical task for most organisations. Existing approaches for salesperson recruitment primarily rely on filtering of applications based on selection criteria followed by interviews. Some organisations also include personality testing based on psychometric techniques. The high turnover of salesperson in the industry suggests limited success of these procedures. Additionally, existing approaches lack benchmarking methods. In this paper we describe design and development of an intelligent sales recruitment and benchmarking system (ISRBS) for recruitment and benchmarking of salespersons. ISRBS design represents operation of the findings and outcomes based on actual field studies and random surveys of salespersons as well as development of models for measuring independent and dependent variables related to selling behaviour. The main contributions of the paper are (i) Developing an on line selling behaviour profiling technique based on integration of intelligent system techniques like expert systems and fuzzy sets, psychology based selling behaviour model, and AHP techniques, and (ii) an objective and novel selling behaviour benchmarking technique to facilitate modelling of organisation based benchmarks and cultural fits. An earlier version of this system has been commercially used in the industry in Australia. ISRBS integrates psychology based selling behaviour model with artificial intelligence techniques and soft computing methods for selling behaviour profiling and benchmarking.

Sales management among other responsibilities includes forecasting demand (sales), managing salespersons, and establishing sales quotas. Managing salespersons involves such activities as recruitment and training of salespersons, supporting the salespersons in their work, meeting with customers, establishing territories and evaluating performance. Recruiting the right type of salesperson who matches the organisational needs has a critical impact on the performance of the sales force, sales manager, and the organisation as a whole (Barksdale et al., 2003, Dessler, 2002, Franke and Park, 2006, Jaramillo et al., 2006 and Raub and Streit, 2006). Statistics show improper recruitment of salespersons leads to job dissatisfaction, substandard performance and high turnover (Arvey and Campion, 1982, Barksdale et al., 2003, Dixon et al., 2002, Futrell and Parasuraman, 1984, Garcia and Kleiner, 2001, Galvin, 2001, Levashina and Campion, 2006 and Sunderland, 2001). On the other hand, improper recruitment techniques can cost $100,000 per salesperson (Churchill, Ford, & Walker, 1997) as expenses for recruitment, training, lost sales and managerial time devotion. Recently, organisations have also employed psychometric tests techniques (Aiken, 1999, Compton et al., 2001, Schapper et al., 2000 and VNU Business Publications Ltd., 2002). Psychometric techniques assess personality strengths and weaknesses of a sales candidate, providing feedback on candidate’s stability for a position (Cole et al., 2003 and Friedenberg, 1995). These techniques are based on the premise of comparing or benchmarking the candidate against an ideal set of parameters related to various personality traits. These parameters and the measurement techniques do not necessarily take into account the personality traits and characteristics which have been found to be successful on the ground in a given organisation. Therefore, conducting a psychometric test and comparing the candidate against an ideal set of parameters may not be suitable or appropriate in practice. Further, indirect questions used in psychometric techniques for evaluation are not well understood by the candidates and candidates resist and some times refuse to answer indirect questions.1 Thus, there is a need for providing an objective feedback, using direct question based techniques and developing selling behaviour profiling techniques on selling behaviour of salespersons and there by improving the information quality about the candidate’s selling behaviour for smart decision making. This paper describes an intelligent sales recruitment and benchmarking system (ISRBS) which combines a selling behavioural model and knowledge and experience of the sales managers to develop an expert system for determining selling behaviour category & profile sales candidate online. The benchmarking method can be considered as an objective way of determining social and cultural person fits in an organisation. The selling behaviour profile feedback provided by the ISRBS can be used by the interview panel to customize and validate the interview of a sales candidate and focus on areas where the behaviour profile is representing commitment towards a behavioural category or areas where there is lack of clarity in the behaviour profile. The paper is organised as follows. Section 2 starts with introducing a two dimensional selling behaviour model that is used in the research. This is followed by design and description of intelligent selling behaviour model. The intelligent selling behaviour model outlines twelve fuzzy behaviour categories to determine the behavioural category and intensity of a salesperson. Section 3 describes the design of the selling behaviour profile analysis which includes the seventeen areas and their weightings used for behaviour evaluation related to twelve fuzzy behaviour categories. Then, questions were designed to analyse the seventeen areas of the selling behaviour. Section 4 explains the design of intelligent selling behaviour categorisation and benchmarking system. Section 5 reports on some results of implementing the intelligent selling behaviour categorisation component, and the ISRBS behaviour profile benchmark component. Finally, Section 6 concludes the paper.

Traditionally, computer-based artefacts have not been popular in the human resource management function in an organisation. Despite their limited success, most existing approaches of salesperson recruitment rely on interviewing processes and psychometric techniques for evaluating behaviour profiling and behaviour categorization of a sales candidate. This paper makes two significant contributions to the advancement of knowledge in the area of sales recruitment benchmarking. Firstly, it describes design and construction of an on line selling behaviour profiling technique based on direct questions method as against indirect questions method employed by existing psychometric methods (e.g., Myer–Briggs). The advantage of using the direct question method approach is that unlike the existing indirect psychometric approaches, the questions are well understood by the candidates as well as the line managers. In this paper the implementation of this method is described through novel integration of intelligent system techniques like expert systems and fuzzy sets, psychology based selling behaviour model, and AHP techniques. Benchmarking is difficult to achieve in an interview and with existing recruitment processes. Thus secondly, based on feedback from the industry a unique selling behaviour benchmarking technique is developed to facilitate modelling of organisation based benchmarks and cultural fits. An overall selling behaviour category benchmark as well as a benchmark involving area wise comparison between sales candidates and existing successful salespersons in an organisation is developed. The psychology based artefacts used for designing the selling behaviour attributes employ research along generalisability, field studies, modelling precision dimensions. ISRBS evaluation of a candidate’s selling behaviour, is done through meaningful simulations of the areas that are used by Domain Experts (sales managers) while assessing a candidate’s selling behaviour. These domain experts were chosen from the consumer as well as industrial goods sector in the industry. ISRBS is an outcome of active participation and cooperation of industry in Australia. A number of features (e.g., benchmarking) are incorporated in ISRBS as a direct feedback from industry and ISRBS customers. The behavioural profiles of the recruited candidates can be stored in a database for future re-deployment in sales related jobs (for example, customer service and support). Therefore, ISRBS has been developed with an intent to assist human resource consultants, line managers and organisations in objective analysis of sales candidates before (as well as after) making an investment in them in terms of salary, training and management time.